The Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) published a notice on October 31, 2025 telling Ontario owners of boilers and pressure vessels that Certificate of Inspection fees would increase from January 2, 2026. The authority said the program had never covered its own costs. The change is now in effect, and it reaches anyone who owns or manages certified pressure equipment in the province.
What TSSA announced
The short answer: higher certificate fees, effective January 2, 2026, with cost recovery as the stated reason.
According to the notice:
- What changes: fees for Certificates of Inspection (COIs) issued for boilers and pressure vessels.
- When: January 2, 2026.
- Why: the COI program had operated at a deficit since it began, and TSSA, as a not-for-profit regulator, must recover both direct and indirect costs.
- How the new fees were set: TSSA recalculated them using an updated count of the boilers and pressure vessels in its inventory, plus efficiency gains from new IT systems.
- Background: TSSA said it had deferred an increase in 2023 to concentrate on expanding the inventory base first.
The notice states plainly that running the program at a deficit was not sustainable.
What the notice does not say
The text of the notice does not give dollar amounts or percentages. It refers to a comparison against the fees in effect as of May 1, 2025, presented in a format we couldn't read as text. We have not published figures we couldn't verify. Owners who want the exact numbers should check TSSA's current fee schedule or contact TSSA directly.
There was also no phase-in described. The increase applied from a single date.
Who feels it
The fee falls on equipment owners, not on the contractor who installed the boiler. But boiler service companies hear about it anyway, because owners ask the people they already call.
The groups most likely to notice are:
- Commercial property managers with central plants serving apartment buildings, offices or schools.
- Institutional owners with several boilers and pressure vessels across sites.
- Industrial operators whose pressure equipment inventory runs well beyond space heating.
For a small house with a residential boiler, certificate fees are generally not part of the conversation. For a building owner with a plant room, they are a line in the operating budget.
Analysis: why a boiler company should care
This section is our analysis, not TSSA's.
A fee change is not a sales opportunity, and nobody should market it as one. But it does shift how owners think about their equipment, and that affects the questions a boiler contractor gets.
Three things are worth doing:
- Be the calm explainer. When a property manager asks why their certificate costs more this year, a company that can point to TSSA's notice and explain it in two sentences earns trust. Don't speculate about amounts you haven't seen.
- Connect it to planning, not panic. Owners reviewing operating budgets are also reviewing equipment age. That's a natural time to offer a plant-room assessment or a replacement plan, presented honestly.
- Write it down once. A short, dated news-style page on your own site, citing TSSA, answers the question for every customer at once. Our regulation content service produces those pages, and our paid search service can keep commercial searches from wasting budget on residential clicks.
How certificate costs fit an owner's budget
Inspection certificates are one line among many in a plant room's running costs. When owners review them, they tend to look at the whole list: fuel, maintenance contracts, water treatment, insurance and the eventual replacement. A contractor who understands that list is more useful than one who only talks about equipment.
A simple way to help an owner, without quoting fees you haven't verified:
| Cost line | Who usually knows it |
|---|---|
| Certificate of Inspection fees | The owner, from TSSA's invoice |
| Annual fuel use | The owner, from utility bills |
| Maintenance and repairs | The service contractor |
| Remaining service life | The contractor's assessment, stated as an estimate |
Putting those four lines on one page turns a fee complaint into a planning conversation, which is where good commercial relationships start.
Related Ontario coverage
This is one of three TSSA stories in our newsroom. Read about Revision 1 to Ontario's boilers and pressure vessels code adoption document and the gaseous fuels amendment that adds boiler clauses to the gas code. The Ontario region page collects the province's regulators and current programs.
BoilerNews.ca is published by a marketing and business consulting service. We don't inspect, certify or repair boilers, and this article summarises a public notice rather than offering compliance advice.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays Certificate of Inspection fees?
The notice was addressed to owners and operators of boilers and pressure vessels that hold Certificates of Inspection, and to TSSA's boiler and pressure vessel web subscribers. In practice that is mostly building owners and facility operators rather than installing contractors.
How much did the fees go up?
The text of TSSA's notice doesn't state the amounts. It compares new fees with those in effect as of May 1, 2025 in a table we could not read as text, so check the current fee schedule on TSSA's site or ask TSSA.
Why did TSSA raise them?
TSSA said the program had operated at a deficit since it began, that as a not-for-profit it must recover its costs, and that it recalculated fees using an updated equipment inventory and savings from new IT systems.