This Policy forms part of the Permit.ca Terms of Service and uses the terms defined there. Where this Policy and the Terms of Service differ on refunds, cancellations or disputes, this Policy governs.
This summary is for convenience. The rest of this Policy governs.
2.1 Clients and Vendors each hold their own wallet account with the Payment Provider, opened directly with it under its own onboarding and identity verification. Funds are held by the Payment Provider in dedicated safeguarding accounts, separate from its own funds.
2.2 Permit.ca does not receive, hold or take custody of your money at any point. We hold no account into which it is paid, it never passes through our accounts, and we earn no interest or other return on it while it is held. Our role is to transmit instructions to the Payment Provider: that a Milestone has been funded, submitted, approved, rejected or resolved.
2.3 Clients pay no platform fee. A Client pays only the Milestone amounts due to their Vendor, plus GST/HST and approved disbursements.
2.4 Funding channel. Funding is by Interac e-Transfer through the Payment Provider. We do not accept pre-authorized debit or card payments for project funding.
3.1 A Client funds one Milestone before the Vendor begins it.
3.2 Settlement time. Interac settlement can take anywhere from moments to approximately 96 hours. You are not blocked from reviewing or approving a Milestone while settlement is still completing.
3.3 Transfer limits. Per-transfer and daily sending limits are set by the Payment Provider and by your own bank, not by us. A large Milestone may need to be funded across more than one transfer. The Platform will tell you when this applies and track the parts against the Milestone.
3.4 A Milestone is treated as funded when the Payment Provider confirms it. The Vendor is shown that the Milestone is funded, and should not begin before that.
4.1 The Vendor submits the Milestone’s Deliverables through the Platform. You then have [10] days to either approve the Milestone or reject it.
4.2 Effective rejection. A rejection must be in writing, through the Platform, with specific reasons identifying what is missing or deficient by reference to the scope in the accepted Quote. A rejection that identifies no specific deficiency is not effective and the review period continues to run.
4.3 What you may not withhold approval for. You may not withhold approval because of matters outside the agreed scope; a municipality’s decision, comments, requirements or timeline; a change in your own plans, financing, intentions or budget; construction pricing; a dispute with any other party; or dissatisfaction unrelated to the Deliverables.
4.4 Deemed approval. If you neither approve nor deliver an effective rejection within the period in 4.1, and we have sent you at least two reminders, the Milestone is deemed approved and funds release under Section 5. We make this clear in the Platform before it happens. If you are a Consumer, deemed approval applies only where you expressly agreed to it at the time of funding.
4.5 Rectification. On an effective rejection, the Vendor has the rectification period in the Project Agreement to remedy at no additional cost where the deficiency is within the agreed scope. Funds stay held throughout.
5.1 On approval or deemed approval, the Payment Provider releases the Vendor’s share 7 days after approval, less the Vendor’s platform fee and any Reserve.
5.2 Why 7 days. This is one combined window, not two stacked delays. It covers any remaining Interac settlement time plus the scheduled send to the Vendor. A Vendor lands on day 7 regardless of how quickly settlement completed.
5.3 Permit.ca may vary this period on notice. The period applying when a Milestone was funded continues to apply to that Milestone.
5.4 Reserve. Permit.ca may instruct the Payment Provider to withhold a Reserve of up to 20% of a Milestone pending delivery of final Deliverables or resolution of an open dispute, and will instruct its release promptly once the condition is satisfied. A Reserve is a contractual mechanism between Permit.ca and the Vendor. It is not a statutory holdback under section 22 of the Construction Act (Ontario) and does not create, satisfy, substitute for or affect any statutory holdback obligation of any person.
A Client may cancel a funded Milestone at any time before the Vendor has submitted Deliverables for it. What happens to the money turns on one question: is there real work to show?
6.1 The Vendor’s options on cancellation. The funds stay held and the Vendor has [3] business days to do one of two things:
(a) release the funds in full to the Client; or
(b) claim for work performed — stating the percentage of the Milestone claimed, describing what was done, and attaching the work itself.
6.2 No work shown, full refund. Where the Vendor does not respond within that period, or responds without attaching work, the full funded amount is returned to the Client with no cancellation fee and no platform fee. A claim with nothing attached is not a claim.
6.3 What counts as work. Partial deliverables a reviewing professional in the same discipline would recognise as genuine progress toward the specific Deliverables in the Scope Summary — drawings in progress, calculations, a draft application, a completed site measure-up. Time spent, calendar entries, internal notes, an assertion that work began, and a declaration made in the Platform are not work, and none of them supports a claim on their own.
6.4 The Client’s response. If the Client accepts the claim, the claimed percentage is released to the Vendor and the balance is refunded immediately. If the Client does not accept it within [3] business days, the Milestone goes to Dispute Support under Section 8, which apportions the funds on the Project record.
6.5 Limits on a claim. A claim may not exceed the proportion of that Milestone’s Deliverables actually produced. A Vendor who claims materially more than the attached work supports may be suspended or removed from the Platform, and where an independent technical review is needed to resolve it, the cost may be allocated to that Vendor under Section 8.3.
6.6 Work that has not been paid for. Where a Milestone is cancelled and the Vendor is paid for part of it, the Client is entitled to the work it has paid for. Where the Vendor is not paid, the Client acquires no right to use any work in progress, under Section 9 of the Client–Vendor Project Agreement.
6.7 A Vendor who falls behind.
(a) Where the Vendor has not submitted Deliverables for a funded Milestone 21 days after the date for it in the Scope Summary, the Client may ask us to send the Vendor a late notice.
(b) If the Vendor still has not submitted within [5] business days of that notice, the Client may cancel and the full funded amount is returned, whatever the Vendor claims.
(c) This Section does not apply where the delay is caused by the Client — including a failure to supply information, documents, site access, decisions or approvals that the Scope Summary requires — or by anything else outside the Vendor’s reasonable control, such as a municipality’s own timelines. In those cases the date moves by the length of the delay.
(d) Where funds are returned under this Section, any claim the Vendor believes it has for work performed is a matter between the Client and the Vendor under the Project Agreement. We will not support such a claim through Dispute Support.
6.8 Cancelling a Milestone is not terminating the Project. It does not by itself end the Project Agreement between the Client and the Vendor, and does not affect amounts already properly released. Termination is governed by that agreement.
7.1 Where Deliverables have been submitted and the Client rejects the Milestone or cancels, the funds stay held and the rectification process in Section 4.5 runs first.
7.2 If the matter is not resolved, either party may ask for Dispute Support under Section 8. Permit.ca reviews the Project record and apportions the held Milestone funds between an amount released to the Vendor for work that meets the agreed scope and an amount refunded to the Client for the remainder.
Either the Client or the Vendor may ask us to review a disputed Milestone. We review the Project record — the accepted Quote with its scope and exclusions, messages, call transcripts, submitted Deliverables, change orders and approvals — and make an administrative determination about how the held funds for that Milestone should be allocated.
Dispute Support is an administrative allocation of held funds. It is not arbitration, mediation, adjudication, or a determination of any party’s legal rights, liability, negligence, professional standard of care or damages. Our determination:
(a) binds the parties only as to the release of the specific held funds in question;
(b) does not determine, prejudice, extinguish or limit any legal right or remedy either party has against the other, all of which survive in full;
(c) may be pursued afterwards by either party in court, in adjudication under the Construction Act, or in any other forum with jurisdiction; and
(d) is made on the Project record alone, without discovery, evidence under oath, a hearing, or the procedural protections of a legal proceeding.
Where a dispute turns on a technical question — whether a Deliverable meets a professional standard, whether it satisfies the agreed scope — that is not a question we are qualified to decide, and we will not decide it. We may, at our discretion and where practical, arrange for an independent licensed professional in the relevant discipline to review and give an opinion.
That reviewer is independent of Permit.ca. The opinion is the reviewer’s own, given to the parties. Permit.ca does not adopt, endorse or warrant it and is not responsible for it. We use it as an input to the allocation in 8.1. We do not guarantee that a reviewer will be available, that a review will happen in any timeframe, or that one will happen at all. We may allocate the reasonable cost of a review between the parties, or to the party whose position the review does not support.
We may decline Dispute Support where the dispute is outside the Platform record, involves parties other than the Client and Vendor, concerns construction work rather than Professional Services, has already been commenced in another forum, or is otherwise unsuitable. Where held funds are subject to a competing legal claim, court order or statutory process, we may continue to hold them until the matter is resolved, or interplead them.
We aim to acknowledge a dispute within 2 business days and to reach a determination within 10 business days of receiving what we need from both parties. Where an independent technical review is arranged, that period is extended by the time the review takes.
Our total liability arising from Dispute Support, any determination we make, any technical review we arrange, or any failure to provide any of them, is limited as set out in Section 16 of the Terms of Service, and in no event exceeds the amount of the held funds in dispute.
9.1 A dispute may still be raised after approval at any time before the Vendor’s payout has actually been sent.
9.2 While such a dispute is open, the payout is held and Section 8 applies.
9.3 If the dispute is resolved in the Client’s favour, the held funds are returned to the Client. If it is resolved in the Vendor’s favour, the scheduled payout proceeds.
10.1 Once a Vendor’s Interac payout has been sent, it cannot be cancelled, recalled or reversed. This is a feature of Interac e-Transfer, not a Permit.ca policy choice.
10.2 Refunds are therefore not available through the Platform for Milestones already paid out, except where the Client and Vendor agree otherwise between themselves, or where a refund is required by law.
10.3 Nothing in this Section limits a Client’s rights against a Vendor. A Client who believes it is owed money after a payout retains every remedy it has under the Project Agreement and at law, including in the Small Claims Court or the Superior Court of Justice. We will provide the Project record on reasonable request.
11.1 Refunds are issued by Interac e-Transfer to the same Client account that funded the Milestone. We do not refund to a card, to a different person, or by any other method.
11.2 A refund is normally initiated within 2 business days of the entitlement being determined, and settles on Interac’s own timeline.
11.3 Where funding was split across several transfers under Section 3.3, a refund may be returned across several transfers.
12.1 A chargeback, recall or reversal initiated through the Payment Provider automatically opens a dispute on the associated Project, reviewed under Sections 7 to 9.
12.2 Initiating a chargeback, reversal or recall in bad faith is a breach of the Terms of Service and may result in suspension or termination of your account.
12.3 Where funds have been released to a Vendor and are subsequently reversed, recalled or charged back, Permit.ca may recover the amount from the Vendor’s future payouts, from any Reserve, or directly from the Vendor.
13.1 Clients pay no platform fee, so there is nothing fee-related to refund on the Client side.
13.2 Vendors pay a platform fee calculated on a marginal basis on each Engagement — 15% on the first $10,000, 10% from $10,000 to $50,000, and 5% above $50,000 — deducted at release.
13.3 The fee is charged only on amounts actually released to the Vendor. No fee is charged, and nothing is deducted, on any portion of a Milestone that is refunded or reallocated to the Client. Where a Milestone is part released and part refunded — including on a cancellation settled under Section 6.3 — the fee is recalculated on the released portion alone.
13.4 Where Permit.ca has incurred a reasonable, documented cost in managing a dispute — in particular the cost of an independent technical review under Section 8.3 — it may allocate that cost under Section 8.3 and deduct it from the amounts released.
14.1 Cancelling or terminating a Project Agreement is governed by that agreement, not by this Policy.
14.2 On termination, each funded Milestone is resolved under this Policy according to its stage: unfunded Milestones simply do not proceed; funded Milestones with nothing submitted are refunded under Section 6; funded Milestones with Deliverables submitted are resolved under Sections 7 to 9; and approved and paid Milestones are not reversible.
14.3 The Vendor remains entitled to be paid for Services properly performed to the date of termination, and the Client remains entitled to the Deliverables produced to that date on payment, as set out in the Project Agreement.
15.1 Statutory payment rights. Nothing in this Policy limits, waives or replaces any right or obligation under the Construction Act (Ontario), and nothing here is intended to have that effect. Where this Policy and that Act differ, the Act governs.
15.2 Consumer rights. If you are a Consumer, Ontario consumer protection legislation gives you rights this Policy cannot take away. You may bring an action in the Superior Court of Justice or, where applicable, the Small Claims Court; you may commence or join a class proceeding; nothing here requires you to arbitrate; and nothing here restricts your right to publish a review. Any part of this Policy inconsistent with those rights does not apply to you.
15.3 Dispute Support is available in addition to your legal rights, never in substitution for them. Using it does not waive anything, does not start or stop any limitation period, and does not prevent you commencing a proceeding at any time.
16.1 We may update this Policy. The current version is posted with its effective date, and for material changes we give at least 30 days’ notice by email and in-Platform.
16.2 The version in effect when a Milestone was funded continues to govern that Milestone, except where a change is required by law.
To open a dispute, ask about a refund, or raise anything in this Policy:
finance@permit.ca · or through the Platform
2570211 Ontario Inc. o/a Permit.ca · 290 Caldari Rd, Concord, ON L4K 4J4
© [YEAR] 2570211 Ontario Inc. o/a Permit.ca.
