Contractor Dispute
Calculator.

How does a court decide what a contractor owes you?

Ontario courts use expectation damages: the money it takes to put you in the position you'd be in if the contract had been performed. You were always going to pay the contract price for a finished job. So the question isn't "how angry am I?" — it's arithmetic. Add up what you've actually paid, what it now costs to finish any unfinished work, what it costs to fix any defective work, and any other losses the breach caused. Subtract the price you agreed to pay. What's left is your loss — the amount the contractor owes you.

What if the contractor took my deposit and disappeared?

If you paid a deposit and got essentially nothing for it, your money back is the floor. The law calls this restitution — a contractor can't keep payment for work never done. And if hiring someone else to do the same job now costs more than your original contract price, that extra cost is claimable on top of the deposit. That's why the calculator asks for a replacement quote even in the vanished-contractor scenario: the deposit is often only part of what you're owed.

What if the job was abandoned partway?

Your damages are what it costs to get the job finished by someone else, less the balance you never paid. This is where homeowners are most often surprised — in both directions. If you paid heavily up front, the completion quote usually reveals a big claim. But if you held back most of the price, the unpaid balance may cover the completion cost entirely, and withholding it — not suing — is your real remedy. Watch the flip side too: a contractor who walked off can still sue for the value of work actually done, and the court will net the claims against each other.

What if the work is defective?

The usual measure is the cost of cure — what it reasonably costs to put the work right. Get two or three written quotes for a like-for-like fix; that number, minus anything you still owe on the contract, is the core of the claim. Two limits matter. First, mitigation: you must keep losses reasonable, so an upgraded scope or a gold-plated quote gets discounted. Second, proportionality: where ripping out and redoing the work would cost wildly more than the benefit, a court can award the smaller drop in your property's value instead. Photograph everything before the repair crew arrives — once the fix is done, the defect is gone as evidence.

Is it worth suing your contractor?

It's worth suing when your provable damages are meaningful, the two-year deadline hasn't passed, and the contractor — or their company — can actually pay a judgment. Most contractor claims fit inside the $50,000 Small Claims Court limit, where filing starts at about $108 and the winner usually recovers costs. But check who you contracted with before you file: a numbered company with no assets can make even a won judgment hard to collect. In most cases the smart first move is a demand letter — many contractors pay or negotiate when the numbers are laid out the way a court would see them. Once you have your figure, the Small Claims Court Calculator adds interest and costs for the full claim value, and the Limitation Period Calculator confirms you're still in time.