Wage Garnishment in Ontario: The Wages Act, Court Procedure, and What Beats It

Ontario's Wages Act exempts 80% of wages from an ordinary garnishment and 50% from a support garnishment, but a judge can move that line in either direction, and neither the Canada Revenue Agency nor the Family Responsibility Office is bound by it at all.

Information last verified on 2026-08-16. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This article goes deeper than the province comparison in wage garnishment in Canada, which covers Ontario's 80/50 percentage figures at a summary level alongside British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec. This page focuses on Ontario alone: the exact Wages Act subsections, the court procedure that gets a garnishment in place, and the priority regimes, support enforcement, the CRA, and bank-account garnishment, that operate outside the Wages Act entirely. It does not cover other provinces, and it does not cover the debt-collection conduct rules that apply before a creditor sues; for those, see debt collection rules in Ontario.

The Wages Act, Section 7: The Full Exemption Rule

"(2) Subject to subsection (3), 80 per cent of a person's wages are exempt from seizure or garnishment. (3) Fifty per cent of a person's wages are exempt from seizure or garnishment in the enforcement of an order for support or maintenance enforceable in Ontario." (Wages Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. W.1, s. 7(2)-(3))

Section 7(1) defines wages, for this purpose, as excluding any amount an employer is required by law to deduct, and section 7(1.1) extends the definition to disability payments that replace lost income, whether the scheme is run by the employer or someone else. The 80% figure applies to ordinary debts, credit cards, personal loans, unpaid contracts, and the like. The 50% figure applies specifically to enforcement of a support or maintenance order.

What is genuinely underused about section 7 is that the judge's variance power in subsections (4) and (5) runs both directions, not just toward the debtor. Section 7(4) lets a creditor move, on notice to the debtor, to have the exemption decreased, if a judge is satisfied it is just having regard to the nature of the debt, the debtor's financial circumstances, and any other relevant matter. Section 7(5) is the debtor-favourable mirror: a debtor can move, on notice to the creditor, to have the exemption increased on the same kind of hardship analysis. Most consumer-facing descriptions of this section mention only the increase side; the decrease motion is real and available to a creditor who can show the debtor's circumstances justify it. Section 7(6) lets an employer, once notified of either motion, pay the disputed non-exempt portion into court while the motion is decided.

Wage Assignments Are Void, With One Exception

"(7) Subject to subsection (8), an assignment of wages or any part of them to secure payment of a debt is invalid. (8) A person may assign to a credit union to which the Credit Unions and Caisses Populaires Act, 2020 applies the part of the person's wages that does not exceed the part that may be seized or garnished under this section." (Wages Act, s. 7(7)-(8))

A private agreement to sign over part of a paycheque to secure a debt does not work in Ontario; section 7(7) makes it invalid outright. The single exception, section 7(8), lets a person assign wages to a credit union, but only up to the same portion that a court-ordered garnishment could already reach under section 7. In other words, a credit union wage assignment cannot be used to get around the 80% or 50% exemption; it can only reach the slice that was garnishable anyway. This is the same carve-out referenced in the debt-collection regulation's employer-contact rule; see debt collection rules in Ontario for the collector-conduct side of that provision.

How Garnishment Actually Proceeds: Two Courts, Two Rule Sets

An ordinary creditor cannot garnish wages on its own initiative. It first has to sue and win a judgment, then use one of two procedures depending on where the judgment was obtained: the Superior Court of Justice under rule 60.08 of the Rules of Civil Procedure, or the Small Claims Court under rule 20.08 of the Rules of the Small Claims Court. The two procedures are close in substance but differ in a few specifics worth knowing before filing.

One difference worth flagging as a discrepancy rather than resolving it: rule 60.08(11) in the Superior Court explicitly lets the garnishee deduct $10 for the cost of making each payment before remitting the balance. The equivalent Small Claims Court text in rule 20.08(7) does not carry the same $10 deduction language. This article states that difference as found in the two rules rather than assuming it is a drafting oversight; a garnishee or debtor dealing with a specific case should confirm current wording directly against the regulation in force at the time.

Once a garnishee, typically an employer or bank, is served, it is legally on the hook to pay the amount specified to the court or sheriff rather than the debtor. Continuing to pay the debtor directly after being served does not get the garnishee off the hook; rule 60.08(18) states the garnishee remains liable to pay in accordance with the notice. In Small Claims Court, the creditor must serve the debtor within five days of serving the garnishee, which means a debtor in a Small Claims garnishment may learn about it close to when their employer or bank does, a faster notification timeline than the Superior Court process specifies.

Priorities That Beat the Wages Act

Not every garnishment goes through this two-court process, and not every garnishment respects the Wages Act's 80/20 or 50/50 split.

Family Responsibility Office support enforcement. The Family Responsibility and Support Arrears Enforcement Act, 1996 lets the Director enforce an existing support order without a fresh judgment for each garnishment. Section 23(1) caps a support deduction at 50% of the net amount owed to the payor by the income source, after standard payroll deductions. Section 23(3) allows up to 100% of an income tax refund or other lump sum payment to be taken toward support arrears. Section 45(1) extends this to joint bank accounts: a notice of garnishment served on a financial institution attaches up to 50% of the money in an account held jointly by the payor and someone else, though the co-holder gets a 30-day window to dispute the seizure under section 45(3).

CRA's Requirement to Pay. Under Income Tax Act (Canada) section 224(1), the Minister can require a third party, typically an employer or bank, to pay money it owes the tax debtor directly to the CRA, in whole or in part, without suing the debtor first. The section itself does not contain a percentage cap or a wage exemption comparable to the Wages Act's 80/20 split. A figure commonly cited by debt-relief and tax-resolution websites, that CRA's administrative practice caps an employee Requirement to Pay at 50% of net wages and takes up to 100% from a contractor or self-employed person, could not be independently verified against a primary canada.ca source for this article; it is not stated here as a confirmed fact. What is confirmed directly from the statute is that CRA does not need a court judgment first and is a fundamentally broader-reaching tool than an ordinary creditor's garnishment.

Bank accounts generally. The Wages Act's exemption applies to wages, defined by section 7(1) as what an employer owes for employment. It does not follow that money into a bank account. Rule 60.08(13) confirms a garnishee's liability for a debt to the debtor includes ordinary bank-account funds, with only narrow carve-outs for accounts, insurance policies, or employment relationships that did not yet exist when the notice was served. Once wages are paid out and deposited, the Wages Act's statutory shield does not travel with the money into the account unless a separate statute protects it there.

Protected Income: ODSP, OW, CPP, OAS, and EI

"18 (1) Income support under this Act, (a) is not subject to alienation or transfer by the recipient; and (b) is not subject to garnishment, attachment, execution, seizure or receivership under any other Act." (Ontario Disability Support Program Act, 1997, s. 18(1))

ODSP income support and Ontario Works basic financial assistance are each protected by nearly identical language in their own statutes, section 18 of the ODSP Act and section 23 of the Ontario Works Act, with a narrow exception allowing a deduction toward a support deduction order or a prescribed government debt. Federally, CPP benefits under Canada Pension Plan Act section 65, Old Age Security and GIS payments under Old Age Security Act section 36, and EI benefits under Employment Insurance Act section 42 are each similarly protected from assignment, seizure, and execution, with exceptions limited mainly to welfare-repayment coordination and, for CPP and OAS, family support enforcement carried out through a separate federal mechanism rather than an exception written directly into those sections.

Both statutes go further and answer the bank-deposit question directly, rather than leaving it open:

"(5) This section applies even if the amount has been paid into the person's account at a financial institution." (Ontario Disability Support Program Act, 1997, s. 18(5); materially identical language appears at Ontario Works Act, 1997, s. 23(5))

The garnishment shield for ODSP income support and Ontario Works basic financial assistance therefore continues once the money has been paid into a bank account; a recipient does not lose that protection just because the money has left the government's system and landed in an account. What section 18(5) and section 23(5) do not resolve is a narrower scenario: an account holding both exempt ODSP or OW deposits and other, non-exempt money from a different source, where tracing which dollars are the protected ones could still be contested. A recipient in that narrower situation, mixed funds from more than one source in the same account, should raise the tracing question directly with the Family Responsibility Office, the creditor, or a lawyer, rather than assume either answer.

Common Myths About Wage Garnishment in Ontario

Creditors can take your whole paycheque. False for ordinary debts. Section 7(2) of the Wages Act exempts 80%, leaving only 20% garnishable, subject to a judge's variance in either direction under section 7(4) or 7(5).

Garnishment never needs a judgment. False as a blanket claim, though real exceptions exist. Ordinary creditors need a court order, since both rule 60.08(1) and rule 20.08(1) require an existing order or judgment. CRA's Requirement to Pay under Income Tax Act section 224 and Family Responsibility Office enforcement under an existing support order are the confirmed exceptions.

Quitting your job stops garnishment for good. Misleading. A Notice of Garnishment is directed at a specific garnishee, and it lasts six years, renewable, under rule 60.08(6.2) or rule 20.08(5.1). A new employer is a new garnishee requiring a fresh notice, so leaving a job changes where the money is collected from, it does not erase the debt or stop the creditor from garnisheeing a new employer or a bank account instead. See final paycheque law in Canada for what an employer still has to pay out when someone leaves a job.

A credit union wage assignment gets around the exemption. Partly true, but capped. Section 7(8) permits it, but only up to the same portion that could already be seized or garnished under section 7, so it cannot reach more of a paycheque than a court-ordered garnishment could.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. It covers wage garnishment in Ontario under the Wages Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. W.1, the Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Rules of the Small Claims Court, current to the Ontario e-laws consolidation of August 12, 2026, together with related federal statutes for CPP, OAS, and EI. It does not cover other provinces, and the specific administrative percentage the Canada Revenue Agency applies to an employee Requirement to Pay is noted here as unresolved rather than stated as a settled rule. ODSP and Ontario Works income support remains protected once deposited into a bank account, under section 18(5) of the ODSP Act and section 23(5) of the Ontario Works Act; only the narrower question of tracing that money once mixed in the same account with other, non-exempt funds from a different source is left open here. Confirm current requirements directly with a lawyer licensed in Ontario before relying on anything described here for a specific situation.