What licences and registrations does a security company need in Ontario?

The two licences the PSISA actually requires

The Private Security and Investigative Services Act requires two separate layers of licensing, and a new security company needs both, not just one. The business licence is issued to the security company itself by the Ministry of the Solicitor General, authorizing it to operate as a security agency, and every individual guard the company employs or contracts needs their own personal security guard licence, earned through required training and a background check, before they can work a single shift. A company cannot simply hire experienced-looking staff and start billing; every guard on every posted shift needs a valid, current individual licence, and the company is responsible for confirming that before scheduling them.

Both licences also have to stay current, not just be obtained once. Individual guard licences expire and need renewal, and a company that lets a guard's licence lapse while continuing to schedule them for shifts is exposed the same way it would be for never having checked in the first place. Building a simple tracking process for licence expiry dates across every guard on staff is a small administrative task that prevents a genuinely serious compliance problem.

Setting the corporation up before applying for the business licence

As with most licensed service businesses, incorporating comes first, since the PSISA business licence is issued to a specific legal entity. Most security companies incorporate provincially or federally, covered in federal or Ontario incorporation, which should I choose, and get the corporate structure and name settled before submitting the licence application, since the application requires the applicant's legal business details up front.

Insurance sized for the contracts you actually bid on

Commercial general liability insurance is expected of any operating security company, and client contracts, especially for larger commercial or institutional properties, often specify a minimum coverage amount the successful bidder has to carry, sometimes reported in the range of a million dollars or more, though we would confirm the specific requirement against each contract's tender terms rather than assume one standard figure applies across every client. Smaller residential or event contracts may accept lower coverage, so the right insurance level is really set by the contracts you intend to bid on, not by a single industry-wide rule.

WSIB and why coverage is not optional here

Security work carries real physical risk, and WSIB coverage is treated as mandatory for this sector rather than something a smaller operator can reasonably skip. Beyond the legal obligation, many commercial clients will not award a contract to a security provider that cannot demonstrate current WSIB clearance, so coverage is as much a condition of winning work as it is a compliance requirement.

Payroll built for 24/7 shift work

Security guards work around the clock, across overnight, weekend, and holiday shifts that standard 9-to-5 payroll systems are not designed to track cleanly. Overtime needs to be calculated correctly across irregular shift patterns, and some employers use an overtime averaging agreement, permitted under the Employment Standards Act with proper written consent, to average hours over a defined period rather than calculating overtime week by week. Getting shift differentials, overtime, and statutory holiday pay right from the first pay run matters more in this industry than in most, since a payroll error across dozens of guards working irregular hours compounds quickly.

Scheduling itself is also an operational challenge that touches payroll directly: guards frequently pick up shifts across multiple sites in the same week, and each site can carry a different bill rate to the client even when the guard's pay rate does not change. Payroll and scheduling systems that cannot reconcile site-level billing against a single payroll run for the same guard tend to produce errors that are time-consuming to untangle after the fact, so this is worth setting up correctly before the guard roster grows past a handful of people.

Bidding on contracts once the licensing is in place

Most security company revenue comes from winning ongoing contracts with commercial properties, institutions, or event organizers, and those tenders typically require proof of the PSISA business licence, current WSIB clearance, and proof of insurance meeting the contract's minimum before a bid is even considered. Getting the licensing, insurance, and WSIB registration in place before actively bidding, rather than scrambling to assemble them once a bid is shortlisted, is what lets a new company respond to opportunities on a realistic timeline.

GST/HST and other standard business registrations

A security company registers for GST/HST like any other business once it crosses, or expects to cross, the $30,000 small supplier threshold, and security services themselves are generally taxable rather than exempt, so HST applies to client invoices in the ordinary way. This sits alongside the standard business number and payroll account registrations every incorporated employer needs.

None of these registrations happen automatically just because the corporation exists; each one, from the business number to the payroll account to GST/HST, is a separate application that should be completed before the company starts invoicing its first client, not discovered as missing when a client's accounts payable team asks for a GST/HST number on an invoice.

How we handle this

We help new security companies sequence incorporation, licensing, WSIB, and payroll setup so the business is ready to bid on contracts as soon as the PSISA business licence is in hand, and we build payroll around shift-based scheduling from day one. This sits alongside our dedicated security company incorporation support.