Subcontractor Certificates — Canada: CNESST, WSIB and the Eleven Other Boards, Payment Hold (Odoo 19)

What this module covers, and what it does not

Workers' compensation insurance is not federal in Canada. Each province and territory has its own board, its own scale of classification units and its own name for the clearance certificate. A module that advertised "Canada" would request the wrong document from a large share of its users.

All thirteen jurisdictions ship with their verified official names, taken on September 14, 2026 from the AWCBC members page and then confirmed one by one on each board's website — WSIB, CNESST, WorkSafeBC, WCB Alberta, Saskatchewan WCB, WCB Manitoba, WorkSafeNB, WCB Nova Scotia, WCB PEI, WorkplaceNL, Yukon, and the WSCC, which alone covers the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Only one validity period is shipped, and that is deliberate. Ontario's: “This clearance number is valid for all your contracts and is valid for up to 90 days”, read on wsib.ca on September 14, 2026. The other twelve are set to zero — “not recorded” — and say so on their record. Shipping ninety days everywhere because Ontario says ninety days would produce twelve false values that nobody would recheck.

Ninety days is short. A clearance certificate obtained in January no longer covers the April payment. That is exactly the case binders miss, and it is why the warning period for this document is set to fifteen days rather than thirty: warning at one third of a document's life produces noise, and noise gets filtered out.

The validity period of Quebec's certificate of compliance could not be determined. cnesst.gouv.qc.ca presents a Cloudflare challenge and returned HTTP 403 on every attempt on September 14, 2026; no archived copy was found. The field is therefore left empty, the screen says so, and the end date is entered on each certificate. A plausible-looking duration would be worse than none: it would switch off vigilance.

What was confirmed, and what really matters

The principal's joint liability in Quebec has an article. Section 316 of the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases (CQLR c A-3.001):

“The Commission may require an employer who retains the services of a contractor to pay the assessment owed by that contractor. […] An employer who has paid the amount of that assessment is entitled to be reimbursed by the contractor concerned and may withhold the amount due from the sums it owes the contractor. Where an employer shows that it retains the services of a contractor, the Commission may inform it whether an assessment is owed by that contractor.”

Paying a subcontractor that does not pay its contributions means risking paying twice. That is why the payment is blocked, not merely flagged.

Stated caveat: the expression “attestation de conformité” (certificate of compliance) appears neither in the LATMP nor in the Act respecting occupational health and safety as reviewed. It appears to be a CNESST administrative tool based on section 316 — this could not be confirmed, and the module does not present it as a named statutory obligation.

The section of the Ontario act could not be read. ontario.ca responds with HTTP 200 but serves only a JavaScript shell, and canlii.org responded with 403. Only the WSIB's administrative page confirms the obligation in construction. The "legal basis" field is free-form and empty: write in it only what you have read.

The Canada-specific blocking rule

A missing employer number blocks payment, when the organization is configured to require it. Canadian boards do not respond to a company name: they respond to a number. Without it, the certificate cannot be re-verified on the portal — and a certificate that cannot be re-verified ends up being taken on trust.

This reason hooks into the US module's refusal; it does not rewrite it: same click, same message, same written and logged override.

The API and its workaround

No Canadian board exposes a documented public API. The WSIB offers eClearance, an interactive portal; the CNESST offers online services behind authentication. No public technical documentation was found for either.

The workaround is therefore owned and kept short: a button on the subcontractor's record opens its commission's portal, with the employer number in view. Everything else goes through the internal register, which depends on no one.

The module records findings; it does not draw conclusions

It says that a clearance certificate has expired and refuses the payment. It does not say that the contract must be terminated, that work on site must stop, or that the subcontractor is not covered — only that the proof is missing.

What you need first

dyo_attestations_na (the full edition), which itself brings in the free register dyo_attestations_na_lite.