Tenant vs. Landlord: Who Handles the Permit in Ontario?

It is the most common question we get from first-time commercial tenants, usually asked two weeks after the lease is signed instead of two weeks before: whose job is the building permit? Here is how it actually works in Ontario.

The Default: Whoever Does the Work Permits the Work

In practice, the party performing construction is responsible for ensuring permits are in place. For a standard commercial lease with a tenant fit-up, that means the tenant. Your leasehold improvements, your permit application. The landlord's base building work, if any, is theirs.

But the Landlord Is Still in the Loop

Nearly every commercial lease requires landlord approval of your plans before anything is submitted to the city. Some landlords review in days; institutional landlords with design criteria manuals can take weeks and require specific drawing formats. The costly mistake is running these approvals in series. We run the landlord package and the city application in parallel so neither waits on the other.

Three Lease Clauses to Read Twice

• The work clause. What exactly counts as landlord's work versus tenant's work? Undefined scope boundaries create both gaps and double-payment.
• The approval clause. How long does the landlord have to respond to your drawings, and is consent "not to be unreasonably withheld"?
• The restoration clause. What must be removed or restored at lease end? Some improvements you permit today may need to be un-built later.

The Change of Use Trap

Here is the scenario that catches tenants every year: the lease says the unit is "commercial," the tenant assumes that covers their gym, clinic, or restaurant, and the code disagrees. A change of use can trigger washroom, ventilation, fire separation, and accessibility upgrades that neither the lease nor the landlord will pay for. The fix is simple: understand the zoning and code implications before signing. We look at these situations constantly, and that conversation has saved our clients from some genuinely bad leases.

Who Actually Applies

Either party can authorize an agent to apply on their behalf, and in practice that is what happens: we prepare the drawings, complete the forms, and submit as the applicant's agent, keeping tenant, landlord, and municipality aligned through one managed process.