How to choose a commercial cleaning company in Ottawa.
Choose a commercial cleaning company on what you can check before you sign: a scope that lists every task and how often it happens, a price worked out after someone has walked your space, a straight answer on who takes the waste away, and a way to hear about anything the crew could not do. In Ottawa the waste answer matters more than people expect. A small business on the City's Yellow Bag Program sets garbage out once every two weeks, in yellow bags bought in advance, so a crew emptying your bins five nights a week needs somewhere to put it. And if you are replacing a cleaner rather than hiring your first, Part XIX of Ontario's Employment Standards Act covers that exact switch, including what a bidder can ask you about the crew already in the building.
Replacing a cleaner?
Send the task list you have now, or walk us through the space. The price comes after we have seen it.
(613) 852-4059What commercial cleaning covers, and what to put in writing.
Commercial cleaning is scheduled cleaning of a workplace: washrooms, kitchens, floors, reception, glass and the surfaces people touch, most often done after the business has closed. The list changes from one building to the next, and the list is what you are paying for.
A scope you can hold a company to names each task and how often it happens. "Office cleaning, five nights a week" is a schedule with nothing in it. "Empty every bin and wipe the kitchen counters nightly, scrub the entrance tile weekly from November to April, clean the interior glass monthly" is a scope, and it is what you compare the fiftieth visit against.
Write the boundaries down as well. In a dental or medical office, instrument reprocessing and disinfecting the treatment rooms stay with the practice's own staff under its infection prevention and control obligations. The cleaning company takes the waiting room, reception, washrooms, floors and staff room around that work. A warehouse is a different job again: concrete floors, loading bays and racking aisles, usually cleaned in the gap between shifts.
Then settle who buys the paper towel, soap and bin liners. Either way works. It changes the monthly figure, so it belongs in the quote rather than in a conversation afterwards.
Commercial or residential cleaning: the rules that follow a business.
A house cleaner and a commercial cleaner can use the same mop. What differs is the set of rules around the job. In Ontario a business carries obligations a household does not: where its garbage goes, how the people cleaning it are trained on chemicals, and what happens to them when the contract changes hands.
Start with the garbage. An Ottawa business either pays a private hauler or registers for the City's Yellow Bag Program for Small Businesses. It qualifies if it produces 16 or fewer City yellow bags of garbage every two weeks and sets out recycling and green bin material regularly as well. In a building with several business tenants, every business has to join, and the combined total still cannot pass 16 bags.
Garbage goes to the curb every two weeks in pre-purchased City bags, sold at $17.60 for a package of four, tax included. Each bag has to weigh under 15 kg, and everything has to be out before 7 am. Recycling and green bins are collected weekly, and registration is renewed every year. The program turns away appliances, large bulky items, construction and renovation waste, tires, electronic waste, hazardous waste, and liquids such as cooking oil and grease trap waste. The City also warns that a business with a binding waste contract may owe its hauler cancellation penalties if it joins.
Large buildings add a provincial rule. Under Ontario Regulation 103/94, the owner of an office building, or of a group of nearby buildings under the same ownership, with at least 10,000 square metres of office floor area has to run a source separation program, in any municipality of 5,000 people or more. For offices the list is aluminum and steel food and beverage cans, corrugated cardboard, fine paper, newsprint, and glass bottles and jars. A residential building with six or more units, condominium corporations included, carries its own version of the rule. The duty sits with the owner, but the night crew is the one holding the bags, so ask how they keep the streams apart.
Then the chemicals. The cleaning company employs the people working in your building after hours, so Ontario's workplace chemical rules sit with it. The province's WHMIS guide says an employer has to make sure workers exposed to a hazardous product receive training, and has to keep current safety data sheets readily available to them on each shift. Its own example of getting that wrong: sheets kept in an office that is locked during the night shift. Consumer products, the kind sold for household use, are exempt from the label and data sheet rules, but the training duty still applies to them. Ask which products will be used in your space, and ask to see the data sheets for the ones that have them.
Replacing a cleaner: Ontario's rule for the crew already in your building.
Ontario's Employment Standards Act treats cleaning as a building service, inside and outside, window cleaning included. Part XIX of the Act applies whenever one provider of a building service replaces another: when you move the contract from one company to another, when you contract out cleaning your own staff used to do, or when you bring it back in-house.
The core of it is section 75. If the new provider does not take on an outgoing provider's employee who was working at your premises, the new provider has to meet the Act's termination and severance obligations for that person as if it had ended the job itself. There are exceptions, and one covers employees who did not do their work mainly at your building in the 13 weeks before the changeover.
Section 77 gives bidders a way to price that in. A company bidding for your contract can ask you, as the owner or manager, for set information about each employee now cleaning the premises: job description, the wage rate actually paid, benefits and what they cost, regular hours, hire date, and the weeks worked at your building in the 26 weeks before the request. You have to provide it when asked. The current provider has to give it to you so that you can, and anyone who receives it has to keep it confidential except as that Part allows.
The province's interpretation manual says the purpose is to let bidders estimate their termination and severance exposure while they prepare a bid. So if your building already has a cleaner, expect a careful bidder to ask for this, and be ready to request it from your current provider.
What moves the price, and why it follows a walkthrough.
Commercial cleaning is priced as a monthly figure for a schedule. The number moves with the floor area actually cleaned, which is rarely the area on the lease, with how many washrooms and kitchens are in scope, how many nights a week the crew attends, the floor types, the number of entrances, and whether consumables are included. Clinical and food-handling areas take longer per square metre than open office space.
This guide prints no Ottawa or Ontario average rate. A per-square-foot number given before anyone has seen the building leaves out the washrooms, the entrances and the waste, and those are what separate one building's price from another's.
To compare quotes, give every company the same written task list with the same frequencies and ask each to price it. The prices then describe the same work. Ask for waste as its own line too, since a business outside the Yellow Bag Program pays someone to haul it.
Write winter into the scope. From November through April salt comes in on every pair of boots, the entrance needs more attention than the rest of the floor, and a schedule agreed in July should say what changes when the snow arrives.
How we run commercial cleaning.
We do commercial cleaning across Ottawa and Gatineau: offices, retail units, dental and medical offices, warehouses, and the common areas of managed buildings, nightly, weekly or as a one-off. Every quote starts with a walkthrough. The tasks and their frequencies are written down, and anything the crew cannot fix or finish comes back to you instead of being skipped.
Junk removal is our core service, so the things a cleaning contract and the Yellow Bag Program leave behind, old desks and chairs, broken equipment, filing purges and end-of-lease leftovers, can go out with the same company. Carpet steam extraction and post-construction cleaning run off the same crew, which helps at a move-in or a handover.
Call or text (613) 852-4059, or email info@ottawasiterestoration.ca, to book the walkthrough. If you already have a task list from your current cleaner, send it with the request.
Eight questions for any cleaning company, ours included.
Rules from City of Ottawa and Government of Ontario pages, read on 2026-09-28, and linked at the foot of this page.
| Ask | A good answer | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Will you walk the space before you quote? | Yes, with you, before any figure is given. | Floor area cleaned, washrooms, entrances and floor types set the price, and none of them come across on a phone call. |
| Can I see the scope in writing? | Every task, with daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly beside it. | It is the only thing you can hold the fiftieth visit to. |
| Who takes the garbage and recycling away? | A named route: your hauler, their arrangement, or the City's Yellow Bag Program. | The Yellow Bag Program collects garbage every two weeks and refuses bulky items, electronics and renovation waste. |
| How do you keep recycling streams apart? | Separate bags or carts, collected separately. | O. Reg. 103/94 requires a source separation program in office buildings with 10,000 square metres or more of office space. |
| Which products will you use here? | A list, with safety data sheets for any WHMIS hazardous product. | Ontario puts worker training and data sheet access on the cleaning company as the employer. |
| What liability insurance do you carry? | The coverage, with proof shown before you sign. | It is the first thing you will need if something in your building is damaged. |
| How will I hear about what the crew could not do? | A note of the exceptions: a stain that would not lift, a broken fitting, supplies running low. | Tasks skipped without a word are how a scope drifts. |
| If you are replacing a cleaner: have you asked about the current crew? | Yes, through the information section 77 of the Employment Standards Act lets a bidder request. | A new provider can owe termination and severance to outgoing staff it does not take on. |
Scheduled cleaning of a workplace: washrooms, kitchens, floors, reception, glass and high-touch surfaces, usually after hours. The exact tasks and how often each one happens belong in a written scope, because that list is what the contract covers. In a dental or medical office, clinical reprocessing and treatment-room disinfection stay with the practice.
The schedule and the rules around it. Commercial cleaning runs to a written scope, often at night, in a workplace where the cleaning company is the employer responsible for WHMIS training. The waste differs too: an Ottawa business pays a hauler or registers for the City's Yellow Bag Program, and changing contractors brings in Part XIX of Ontario's Employment Standards Act.
It is priced as a monthly figure for a schedule, set after a walkthrough. The floor area actually cleaned, the washrooms and kitchens, the nights per week, floor types, entrances and consumables move the number. We give no average rate here, because a figure quoted before anyone has seen the building leaves out what sets the price. Compare quotes by giving every company the same written scope.
Ontario's Employment Standards Act covers it. Under Part XIX, if the new provider does not take on an outgoing employee who was working at your building, it has to meet the Act's termination and severance obligations for that person as if it had ended the job itself. There are exceptions, including staff who did not work mainly at your building in the 13 weeks before the changeover.
Yes, through the Yellow Bag Program for Small Businesses, if it produces 16 or fewer City yellow bags of garbage every two weeks and sets out recycling and green bin material too. You register, renew every year, and set garbage out every two weeks in City yellow bags, which cost $17.60 for four. Appliances, bulky items, electronics and renovation waste are not accepted.
Yes. Junk removal is our core service, so desks, chairs, broken equipment, filing purges and end-of-lease leftovers can go out alongside a cleaning schedule, or as a single job.
Sources
- City of Ottawa, Yellow Bag Programs: who qualifies as a small business, the collection rules, the bag price and what is refused read 2026-09-28
- Government of Ontario, O. Reg. 103/94, industrial, commercial and institutional source separation programs read 2026-09-28
- Government of Ontario, Employment Standards Act Policy and Interpretation Manual, Part I: cleaning as a building service read 2026-09-28
- Government of Ontario, Employment Standards Act Policy and Interpretation Manual, Part XIX: building services providers, sections 75 and 77 read 2026-09-28
- Government of Ontario, Employment Standards Act Policy and Interpretation Manual, O. Reg. 287/01: the exemptions and the information a bidder can request read 2026-09-28
- Government of Ontario, WHMIS: a guide to the legislation, WHMIS and the employer read 2026-09-28
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