The Three Provinces That Require a Salary Range in Job Postings
Quick fact for anyone job-hunting from South Africa: a Canadian posting with no dollar figure in sight doesn’t automatically mean a lowball offer or a shady employer. It might just mean the job is in a province with no rule requiring one. As of now, the provinces that require salary range in job postings number exactly three, and each got there on a different date with different fine print.
Prince Edward Island — the first mover
PEI’s requirement has been in force the longest, since 1 June 2022. It applies to every employer, regardless of size, and it’s broad: any publicly advertised job posting must include the expected pay for the position or the range of expected pay. PEI also bans employers from asking about your salary history and protects employees who discuss pay with each other. A general recruitment campaign or an internal-only posting doesn’t count as “publicly advertised,” so the duty doesn’t stretch that far.
British Columbia — no cap on the range
BC’s Pay Transparency Act took effect 1 November 2023, again for employers of any size. Every publicly advertised posting needs the wage or salary, or the expected range, and — unlike Ontario — there’s no cap on how wide that range can be. BC also banned asking about salary history from 11 May 2023 and protects against retaliation for pay discussions. A separate pay-gap reporting duty is phasing in on top of this, hitting employers with 50 or more staff from November 2026.
Ontario — narrower reach, tighter range
Ontario’s rule is the newest, effective 1 January 2026, and it only applies to employers with 25 or more employees. Where it does apply, it’s stricter on the number itself: if the posting shows a range rather than a single figure, that range cannot span more than $50,000 a year, and the whole disclosure duty falls away entirely once the expected compensation hits $200,000 annually. Ontario’s rule arrived alongside a wider package — bans on Canadian-experience requirements, mandatory AI-screening disclosure, and a “real vacancy” label — so it reads as part of a bigger overhaul rather than a standalone pay rule.
What the pay-transparency laws by province canada picture actually shows
Laid out side by side, the pay transparency laws by province canada landscape currently looks like this: PEI and BC cover every employer with no range cap; Ontario covers larger employers with a capped range and a high-earner exemption; and everywhere else — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, the territories, and federally regulated employers — there is currently no posting requirement at all. Newfoundland and Labrador is the one to watch: it passed a pay transparency law back in 2022, but the posting-disclosure provisions were never proclaimed in force, so nothing is actually required there yet.
The effect of the law shows up quickly once it switches on. In Ontario, the share of job postings including pay information jumped roughly 30 percentage points in a single year after the rule took effect, reaching 71% by June 2026 — well ahead of the national figure sitting around 57%.
What this means for your job search
If you’re applying into Alberta or Manitoba and see no salary mentioned, that’s simply the local norm, not necessarily a red flag. If you’re applying in PEI, BC, or to a larger Ontario employer and a posting is silent on pay where the law says it shouldn’t be, that’s worth noting — though whether a specific posting is non-compliant, and what to do about it, is a question for the relevant provincial labour standards office rather than something to guess at from a blog post.