Listen Anywhere
You finished your part of the job. You sent the invoice. You already paid your crew, your supplier, and your insurance. Then you find out the company you work for can’t pay anyone.
That’s what more than 140 subtrades woke up to this month. Brook Restoration, a Toronto building envelope restoration firm founded in 2000, defaulted on nearly $28 million in bank loans and went into receivership. Quebec-based Atwill-Morin took over its equipment and more than 20 active high-rise projects worth roughly $100 million in original contract value.
On a recent episode of The Deconstruction Podcast, Kosta and Johny went through what a subtrade can actually do to protect themselves, before and after something like this happens.
The warning signs you can’t see from the site
Court documents show Brook defaulted to its bank in early 2024. That’s more than two years before the collapse went public. Most of the trades on those jobs had no way of knowing.
Johny was blunt about it: sometimes you see it coming, sometimes you don’t. These are large companies, and the subtrades can be doing great work, submitting invoices every month, and still have no view into what’s happening on the other side.
His advice is to build relationships with the two people who can see more than you can: your bank manager and your bonding company. Bonding companies in particular can look into the financials of the company you’re about to sign with. You can’t send a big GC a credit application, but your surety has ways of finding out.
Stay on top of your receivables from day 31
The biggest lesson from the episode is also the least exciting one. You have to chase your money.
Here’s the math Johny laid out. If you get paid today, in late September, that payment covers work from the end of July to the end of August. Your crew has been paid for that work. Your supplier wants their money. Meanwhile you’ve been paying for September out of pocket. You’re always floating at least a month, and every day past 30 pushes that float deeper.
Now picture the company you’re owed money by going insolvent. The trades underneath are the ones left holding it.
A friend of Johny’s who has been in the industry for decades told him it doesn’t matter what the contract says. Follow up on the 31st day. Keep following up. In his experience, the trades who push the hardest get paid first. Subtrades have been too lenient for too long, and a lot of GCs have gotten used to paying at 45 or 60 days because nobody pushed back.
How the Prompt Payment Act in Ontario is supposed to work
Ontario’s Construction Act (people usually call the payment side of it the Prompt Payment Act) sets out a clock that starts when the owner receives a proper invoice. The owner has 28 days to pay the undisputed amount. Once the contractor gets paid, it has 7 days to pay its subtrades.
Add those together and a subtrade can be looking at 35 days or more from the day the invoice goes up the chain. Johny’s frustration on the episode is fair. The timelines exist, but plenty of GCs ignore them, and a lot of subtrades don’t enforce them because they don’t want to be the difficult trade on the job.
The proper invoice rule changed in 2026
Since January 1, 2026, an invoice is treated as a proper invoice unless the owner points out a deficiency in writing within 7 days of receiving it. That matters because the payment clock only starts with a proper invoice.
So the paperwork itself is a protection. An invoice with the right information, matching your schedule of values, sent on your billing date every month, gives the GC fewer reasons to stall. A handwritten carbon copy with a few numbers on it gives them plenty.
Johny told a story about sitting in a client’s office when another contractor walked in with a booklet of carbon-copy invoices to ask about payment. He couldn’t read them. If you’re the person paying, and the invoice is hard to read and harder to match to the work, it goes to the bottom of the pile.
Construction lien deadlines in Ontario
If a company above you can’t pay, a lien is usually your strongest tool. Johny has been through it. His team liened the property quickly, and because the owner’s bank stopped funding the project once the lien was registered, the owner got involved fast and wanted to know how to make it go away.
Timing is everything here. Under the current Act, a subtrade generally has 60 days to preserve a lien, usually counted from the last day you supplied services or materials to the job (or earlier, if a certificate of substantial performance is published). After that there’s a 90-day window to perfect it. Older contracts from before the 2018 changes still run on the old 45-day rules, so check which regime your job falls under.
Here’s the trap Johny pointed out. If your payment terms are 60 days and you only find out you’re not getting paid when the invoice goes overdue, your lien window may already be closing. That’s one more reason to chase receivables early rather than waiting to see what happens.
Lien law has a lot of detail that depends on your contract and your role on the project. If you think you’ll need to lien, talk to a construction lawyer early.
What happens to subtrades when a buyer takes over
In the Brook case, a buyer taking over the projects was the best outcome available. Without one, 140-plus subtrades would be fighting over whatever’s left in a bankruptcy.
It’s still a long road. The new company has to review what was built, what was billed, and what’s unpaid. Every subtrade effectively signs a new contract. And prices have moved. Johny’s example: a contract with $2 million of work left, priced a year or more ago, might cost $2.7 million to finish today. Add in money that’s been owed for 18 months and the negotiation gets messy.
The trades are the ones carrying the risk through all of it.
Ask for quick-pay terms before you sign
Some GCs offer a quick-pay discount, typically around 2%. On a $100,000 contract, you accept $98,000, and in return they pay every invoice within 7 to 10 days. Because it’s written into the contract as the payment term, a late payment becomes a clear breach instead of a slow drift.
On bigger contracts where margins are already thin, you have to run the numbers. But if you’re floating tens of thousands every month, it’s worth asking about before the contract is signed.
Diversify, with one catch
Kosta raised the obvious hedge: don’t let one GC become half your revenue. When Brook went down, the subtrades who depended on it most were hit hardest.
Johny agreed for residential and smaller commercial work. Spread your work across a few reputable contractors who pay on time. At the high-rise level it gets harder. There are only a handful of players doing that work, and a single bonded contract can be worth $10 million to a window or cladding trade. Running three or four of those at once takes a business doing $30 to $50 million a year.
No signed paperwork, no work
The last protection is the one every subtrade can start today. Keep records of everything.
Johny’s crews don’t start extra work because a site super told them to. They wait for a signed purchase order, and an email doesn’t count. If the super wants it done, he can have the project manager call the office. When a job goes sideways, the trade with signed change orders, dated logs, and photos is the one who wins the argument. Without them, it’s your word against theirs.
Kosta shared a story from a Jobtable customer, a residential contractor, whose client came back eight months after a job and claimed work was missing. He opened the job, pulled the daily logs with timestamps and photos, and sent them over. The dispute ended there.
If you’re running jobs in Jobtable, daily logs live inside each job, record who wrote each entry and when, and hold photos alongside the notes. It takes a minute a day and it’s there forever.
👉 Learn more at https://www.jobtable.com
FAQ
How long does a subcontractor have to file a construction lien in Ontario?
Under the current Construction Act, generally 60 days to preserve the lien, usually from the last day you supplied services or materials, followed by 90 days to perfect it. Projects under the old Construction Lien Act follow 45-day timelines.
How long does a general contractor have to pay a subcontractor in Ontario?
Under the prompt payment rules, the owner has 28 days to pay the contractor after receiving a proper invoice, and the contractor then has 7 days to pay its subtrades.
What is a proper invoice under the Construction Act?
An invoice that includes the information the Act requires plus anything reasonably needed for the owner’s accounts payable system. Since January 1, 2026, an invoice is deemed proper unless the owner flags a deficiency in writing within 7 days.
What happens to subcontractors when a general contractor goes bankrupt?
It depends on whether a buyer steps in. If another company takes over the projects, subtrades usually negotiate new contracts. If not, unpaid trades rely on liens, holdback, bonds, and whatever is recovered in the insolvency process.
Can I lien a property if I signed with the contractor and not the owner?
Generally yes. In Ontario, subtrades who supply services or materials to an improvement can have lien rights against the property even without a direct contract with the owner. Confirm the details with a construction lawyer.