Short answer: for most electrical work in an Ontario home, yes — and it is not called a permit.
The word people are looking for is a notification of work, filed with the Electrical Safety Authority. Everyone calls it a permit anyway, including us, but knowing the real term helps when you are searching or talking to an inspector.
What needs one
Broadly, anything that changes the wiring rather than swapping a fitting:
- Panel replacement or a service change
- New circuits of any kind
- A new EV charger circuit
- Adding outlets, switches or fixtures where there were none
- Rewiring, in whole or in part
- A generator transfer switch
- New wiring to a garage, shed or outbuilding
- A hot tub or pool connection
- Anything outdoors or underground
What generally does not
- Replacing a light fixture on an existing box
- Swapping a receptacle or switch like for like
- Changing a breaker for the same size and type
- Plugging something in
The line is roughly: replacing a part is maintenance, changing the wiring is work. If you are not sure, ask. The ESA answers this question on the phone all day and so do we.
Who files it
If a licensed electrical contractor does the work, the contractor files it. That is part of what you are paying for and it should be inside the quoted price. If a quote does not mention the permit, ask whether it is included — that is a fair question and a straight answer to it tells you a lot.
A homeowner can file a notification for work in their own home. You are permitted to do electrical work on the house you live in, provided it is notified and inspected. What you cannot do is have an unlicensed person do it for money, and you cannot do it in a property you rent out.
What the inspection actually covers
An ESA inspector comes out after the work and checks it against the Ontario Electrical Safety Code. On a panel change that means the service size and installation, grounding and bonding, how each conductor is terminated, breaker sizing against the wire it protects, labelling, clearances around the panel, and the condition of what is being connected to it.
They are not inspecting the rest of your house. They are inspecting the work that was notified. This surprises people who expect a general electrical survey and get a focused check of one job — if you want the whole house looked at, that is a different thing and you book it separately.
Sometimes an inspector finds a defect. That is not a disaster: it gets corrected and re-checked. A contractor who has never had a correction notice either does very little work or is not filing.
The Certificate of Inspection
When the work passes, the ESA issues a Certificate of Inspection. Keep it. Scan it. Put it somewhere you will find it in nine years.
It matters in three situations, and all three arrive at bad times:
Selling. A buyer’s lawyer asks for documentation of recent electrical work. No certificate raises the obvious question of whether it was inspected at all, and that question can hold up a closing.
Insurance. After a fire, an insurer will look at whether electrical work was done legally. Undocumented, uninspected work is exactly the sort of thing that turns a claim into an argument.
Buying. If you are buying a house where the panel was clearly replaced recently and there is no certificate, ask why. It is a fair question and the answer is informative either way.
What it costs
The ESA charges a fee per notification, scaled to the work. On a residential panel upgrade it is a modest fraction of the total job.
Any contractor who suggests skipping the permit to save you that fee is telling you something about how they work. The fee is small. The certificate is the point.
The uncomfortable version
Plenty of electrical work in Ontario homes has been done without notification. Basements finished by a previous owner, an outlet added in a garage, a hot tub wired by a friend of a friend.
Most of it is fine. Some of it is not, and you inherit whichever you got when you bought the house.
If you are wondering about your own place, that is what a pre-purchase or condition inspection is for. It will not retroactively create certificates, but it will tell you whether what was done was done properly — which is the question underneath the paperwork.