Electronic Signature Consent in Ontario Real Estate: What ELEC-1 Covers

Last updated 11 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · For Ontario registrants · 9 min read

A one-paragraph clause that carries more weight than it looks

ELEC-1 is among the shortest items in the clause book. It records the parties’ consent to the use of electronic signatures under Ontario’s electronic commerce legislation, for the agreement and for the other documents in the transaction. There is no condition, no deadline and no notice mechanism in it. Most agents have never read it, because it arrives pre-populated in whatever forms platform their brokerage uses.

And the guidance attached to it in the book is a prompt rather than an instruction: check the documentation you are using and decide whether the clause is needed at all. Which is the right question, because if your forms package already handles consent, adding a second consent paragraph in a schedule is clutter, and clutter in a schedule is how contradictions get in.

The reason to spend a post on a clause this small is that electronic signing has quietly changed four things about how Ontario agreements behave, and the clause itself addresses none of them. Consent to sign electronically is not consent to anything else.

Signature is not delivery, and that is the expensive one

A waiver is signed at 4:20 on the deadline. The platform sends its completion notification to everyone on the envelope, including the listing agent. The buyer’s agent closes the laptop. Was the waiver delivered?

That depends entirely on what the agreement says about notice, and nothing whatsoever on what the signing platform says about completion. In High Tower Homes Corp. v. Stevens, 2014 ONCA 911, as reported, a waiver delivered by fax where the agreement required personal delivery was ineffective. The method the agreement specifies governs, and a court is not interested in the fact that everybody received the message.

So the discipline is: signing and delivering are two separate acts, done deliberately, often through two different channels. Signed on a platform, delivered by whichever method the notice provisions actually permit, to whichever address they actually name. A waiver under a financing condition such as MORT-2 (Condition – Arranging a New Mortgage) is signed in seconds and delivered under rules written months earlier. Do not assume a system-generated notification from a signing service to a brokerage inbox satisfies a clause that names the parties or their lawyers.

This matters twice over where a brokerage is in multiple representation, because the brokerage may not be authorised to receive notice on behalf of either client. SBP/SA-5 (Escape Clause – Notices Re: Multiple Representation) exists precisely to route notice away from a brokerage acting for both sides and toward the parties, their addresses, their lawyers or designated contact details. A platform that funnels everything through agent accounts is doing the opposite of what an agreement drafted that way requires. There is more on this in the escape clause post.

Everything now has a timestamp, and that runs in both directions

Wet-signed documents were vague about time. An agent wrote a date, sometimes an hour, usually approximately. Electronic execution records the minute, the time zone and the sequence, and that record sits in a file somebody can produce later.

Ontario courts have been unsympathetic to late performance in some recent decisions. In 3 Gill Homes Inc. v. 5009796 Ontario Inc. (Kassar Homes), 2024 ONCA 6, as reported, a termination was upheld over a payment thirty-five minutes late. In Correa v. Valstar Homes (Oakville Sixth Line) Inc., 2025 ONCA 156, as reported, nine minutes justified termination. Those are builder agreement cases rather than ordinary resale files, and I am not suggesting the same result follows anywhere else. The point is narrower and it is about evidence: minutes are now recorded on every document you send, and the record is not on your side of the table.

The counterweight matters just as much. In More v. 1362279 Ontario Ltd. (Seiko Homes), 2023 ONCA 527, as reported, a seller who was not ready, willing and able could not rely on a time-is-of-the-essence clause, and pouncing on trivial delays was treated as unreasonable. In 2511899 Ontario Inc. v. 2221465 Ontario Inc., 2024 ONSC 4159, as reported, where neither party was ready, neither could rely on the clause. And in VanderMolen Homes Inc. v. Mani, 2025 ONCA 45, as reported, subsequent conduct kept an agreement alive despite a document arriving a day late.

Identity is the thing the clause does not touch

ELEC-1 records that the parties agree to sign electronically. It says nothing about whether the person who clicked was the person named, and that is not a theoretical gap. Every agent has emailed a signing link to a client, and every agent has had a client say their spouse handled it.

Whatever identification steps your brokerage requires, a signature appearing on a document does not satisfy them. Those steps exist in your brokerage’s policy for a reason, and the reason is that a name typed into a signing field proves very little. If you have never met a party in person and the signing happened on a device you cannot account for, that is a file risk worth raising with your broker of record before closing rather than after.

The practical habits are unglamorous. Send signing requests to an address you have verified independently, not to whatever address forwarded you the last message. Have a short call before a significant signature so you know the client is at the keyboard. Keep the audit trail the platform produces, because the audit trail is the only part of an electronic execution that is actually evidence of how it happened.

Acceptance at 11:47 pm starts a 24-hour clock

Keep the two deposit clocks separate, because agents conflate them constantly. The contractual clock comes from the standard agreement: where the deposit is payable upon acceptance, that means delivery to the deposit holder within twenty-four hours of acceptance, and the options in the form are herewith, upon acceptance, or as otherwise described in a schedule. The regulatory clock is different: a brokerage must deposit trust money into its trust account within five business days, and business days exclude weekends and statutory holidays.

An offer accepted at 11:47 on a Friday night starts the twenty-four hour contractual clock at 11:47 on a Friday night. The buyer’s bank is shut. Saturday is not a business day for the regulatory clock but the contractual clock does not care about business days at all. If nobody thought about that at the negotiating stage, somebody is now in breach of a deposit term over a scheduling problem created by convenience.

So when an agreement is going to be signed late, deal with the deposit expressly. Either agree a workable deposit mechanic in a schedule, or hold the confirmation of acceptance until the morning. There is more on both clocks in the deposit clauses post.

Electronic records are still your records

Under the regulations, trade documents must be retained for at least six years and unaccepted written offers for at least one year. Nothing about electronic execution changes that, and a brokerage that assumes its signing platform is the record-keeper has outsourced a regulatory obligation to a vendor contract it has probably never read.

Self-represented parties and the signing link

Electronic signing makes it very easy to include an unrepresented party in a workflow, and that convenience is where registrants get into trouble. Sending someone a link, walking them through where to click, and answering their questions about what a paragraph means is assistance, and some of it is advice you are not permitted to give.

Under TRESA and RECO Bulletin 2.4, confirm the person intends to proceed unrepresented, deliver and explain the RECO Information Guide and the Information and Disclosure to Self-Represented Party form, state plainly that you represent your client and not them, and make reasonable efforts to obtain a written acknowledgement. You must not advise them on price, terms or contract clauses. Explaining what a condition would do for them crosses that line even when it is asked politely at nine at night.

And the misconception worth correcting: the RECO Information Guide under Bulletin 2.1 must be given and explained before you provide services to a client or assistance to a self-represented party, but there is no statutory requirement to obtain an acknowledgement for the Guide. The self-represented party form is the one where written acknowledgement is required. Agents routinely have this backwards, and an electronic workflow makes it easy to collect the wrong acknowledgement and feel covered.

What the clause covers and what it does not

Pull the current wording of ELEC-1 from your own OREA member copy, and check whether your forms package already handles consent before you add it. I am describing what the clause does, not reproducing it.

How I want electronic execution handled

1. Check whether your forms package already carries consent. Add ELEC-1 only if it does not, and never twice.
2. Send signing requests only to addresses you have independently verified, and have a short call before any significant signature.
3. Treat signing and delivery as two separate steps. Deliver by a method the notice provisions permit, to the addresses they name.
4. In multiple representation, confirm whether the brokerage may receive notice at all before anyone relies on a brokerage inbox.
5. Send condition documents in the morning. Confirm receipt in writing the same day.
6. Where acceptance will happen late at night, deal with the deposit timing expressly rather than discovering it on Saturday.
7. Save the audit trail with the document, and know where both will live in six years.

Electronic signing removed friction from a process where some of the friction was doing useful work. The clause consents to the convenience. The habits above are what replaces the part it took away. The rest of this series is indexed at all articles.

Questions agents actually ask

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• Buying a Tenanted Property in Ontario: Rent Warranties, Notices and the Shortfall Adjustment
• Property Tax Clauses in Ontario: Farm Tax, Local Improvements and the Holdback That Saves a Closing
• Building Permit Conditions in Ontario: Drafting a Condition That Survives the Committee
• Every clause and condition guide in one place

This is professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting and procedure around electronic signature consent in Ontario real estate transactions. It is not legal advice. Whether a particular document may be signed electronically, who has capacity to sign, and whether a notice was validly delivered are questions for the client’s lawyer. This is general professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for your own brokerage’s policies, and it does not create any professional relationship. Clause codes refer to OREA’s Guidelines for Residential and Commercial Clauses, an OREA member resource — the clause wording itself is OREA’s and is not reproduced here. Always work from your brokerage’s approved forms, and send your client to a lawyer for anything turning on interpretation, enforceability or remedy. Legislation, regulator guidance and case law all change; verify anything you are relying on.