Ontario’s Cosmetic Pesticide Ban at Home: What You or Your Lawn Company Can Still Use, and When the Exceptions Apply

The rule is written around active ingredients and who uses them, not around what the store happens to stock. Here is how to read a label against the Allowable List, which three health-and-safety exceptions reach a house, and what to ask before anyone sprays your lawn for you.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a real estate broker in Toronto. Picture the call: you have just hired a lawn-care company for the season, and before the first visit you ask one plain question, “What are you going to put down?”

That question matters more than it seems. The core prohibition in Ontario’s Pesticides Act says no person shall “use or cause or permit the use” of an active ingredient on land unless it passes the province’s test. Read literally, those words reach past the person holding the sprayer. If the product is one the rule does not allow, the wording also covers the person who arranged or allowed it, which on your own lawn could be you.

Below I go through the rule in the order you would need it: what “cosmetic” means and the two-part test, how to read a label against the Allowable List, the three exceptions that reach a house, why your city’s old pesticide by-law no longer decides this, and what to ask before you hire anyone.

What “cosmetic” means, and the two-part test in s.7.1(1)

The Act defines “cosmetic” in one word: it means non-essential (s.1). The prohibition itself, s.7.1(1), is then drafted around the active ingredient, not the product name. No person shall use or cause or permit the use in, on or over land of an active ingredient unless it meets two criteria:

1. The Director has determined, under the regulations, that the ingredient is appropriate for use for a cosmetic purpose; and
2. The Director has listed it in a prescribed document published by the Ministry on a government website.

The regulation sets out how the Director decides the first point. Under O. Reg. 63/09 s.17(1), an ingredient qualifies only if it is contained in a Class C or D pesticide whose label shows at least one use outside the exceptions, and only if it is a biopesticide or is judged low-risk against factors such as low toxicity to non-target organisms and not being persistent in the environment.

According to Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (2026), the practical result is a two-way door: a pesticide can be used for a cosmetic purpose only if its use fits an exception to the ban, or its active ingredient is on the Allowable List.

The Allowable List, and how to read a label against it

The prescribed document is named in O. Reg. 63/09 s.18: the List of Active Ingredients Authorized for Cosmetic Uses (Allowable List). The province’s homeowner page puts the test this way: you may only use pesticides that solely contain active ingredients found on that list. It gives borax, corn gluten meal, soap and sulphur as common household examples, and names 2,4-D, Diazinon and glyphosate as examples of ingredients you cannot use for cosmetic purposes.

The word “solely” is what trips people up. The regulation defines an unlisted pesticide as a pesticide that contains an active ingredient that is not a listed active ingredient. One unlisted ingredient is enough to make the whole product unlisted, however many listed ingredients sit beside it.

So when you pick up a product, the order of reading is:

• Active ingredient(s): find every one named on the label and check each against the current list. Ignore the brand name and the front-of-pack claims.
• Class: Ontario classes a pesticide by its federal designation. A federally “Domestic” product is Class D; under s.2(4), a product registered under the federal Fertilizers Act is also Class D. Restricted is Class B and Commercial is Class C.
• Labelled uses: the uses printed on the label matter later, because the exceptions below are tied to particular uses.

The three exceptions that reach a house

Section 7.1(2) lists five exceptions: golf courses, agriculture, forestry, the promotion of public health or safety, and other prescribed uses. For a homeowner the one that matters is public health or safety, which s.16 of the regulation splits into three kinds of target. I take them here starting with the house itself, because that is the exception with the most conditions attached. Each one lets you use an unlisted pesticide only on its own terms (s.7.1(3)).

1. Pests that threaten the structure (s.22)

Clause (c) of the definition covers plants, fungi or animals that affect buildings and structures, “including carpenter ants and termites.” For land on which a building that is not a public work is located, s.22 allows an unlisted pesticide only if both conditions are met:

• (a) the extermination is performed to prevent damage to the structural integrity of the building or structure, where the potential damage would place the health or safety of a person at risk; and
• (b) if the product is a herbicide, it is a Class B or C herbicide whose label says its only active ingredient is glufosinate ammonium or glyphosate or both.

Two things follow from the text. First, condition (a) is a safety test, not a tidiness test: damage to the structure that would put a person at risk. Second, condition (b) leaves out Class D herbicides entirely. Class B and C products are sold under licence rules (s.98.1), and the Act’s licence requirement for exterminations (s.5(1)) is only lifted for Class D products on your own premises (s.70). If you are dealing with a plant problem against the foundation, the regulation does not set out a route that runs through a store shelf; that part is my reading of how the sections fit together, not a sentence in the regulation.

2. Animals that bite, sting or carry disease (definition clause (a))

Clause (a) covers the destruction, prevention or control of “animals that bite, sting, are venomous or carry disease, including wasps, mosquitoes and ticks.” The province’s homeowner page lists wasps or mosquitoes, and fleas or ticks that bite pets, among the pests you can use pesticides against to protect health or safety.

On the retail side, s.97(1) para. 3 allows a Class D product to be sold if its label indicates a use related to clause (a). On the use side, sections 21 to 31 of the regulation set specific conditions for public works, other buildings, poisonous plants and several prescribed uses. I did not find a matching section that adds product conditions for clause (a). What still applies is the label itself and the Act’s general prohibition in s.4 on discharging a pesticide in a way that causes harm beyond what proper use would cause.

3. Plants poisonous by touch (s.23)

Clause (b) covers plants “poisonous to humans by touch, including poison ivy, poison sumac and giant hogweed.” This is the exception with the tightest product rule. Under s.23(1), you may use an unlisted pesticide on those plants only if it is a Class B, C or D herbicide whose label indicates that its only active ingredient is glufosinate ammonium or glyphosate or both.

Section 23(2) then narrows the Class D option: a Class D herbicide of that kind cannot be used for this purpose if its label also says mixing or dilution is required. In practice, the homeowner version of this exception is a product that comes ready to use. The sale rule mirrors it: s.97(1) para. 4 allows a Class D product to be sold for poisonous-plant use only if the label shows that use, those ingredients and no mixing or dilution.

Two products, two legal routes

Why your city’s old pesticide by-law doesn’t decide this

Before the provincial ban, a number of Ontario municipalities had their own pesticide by-laws. The Act now settles the overlap in one sentence, s.7.1(5): “A municipal by-law is inoperative if it addresses the use, sale, offer for sale or transfer of a pesticide that may be used for a cosmetic purpose.”

There is a door in the Act for exceptions, but it is narrow. Section 35(1) para. 48 lets the province prescribe by-laws to which s.7.1(5) does not apply, and s.35(3) says such a regulation shall not prescribe a by-law “unless the passing of the by-law is required under an Act.” I searched the current consolidation of O. Reg. 63/09 and found no provision prescribing a by-law under that power.

What this means for you: if a neighbour or an old city flyer quotes a municipal pesticide rule, the provincial Act and regulation are where the answer is. I am not saying any specific by-law has been repealed, only that the Act makes this kind of by-law inoperative.

Hiring someone: “cause or permit” and what the company needs

Back to the call with the lawn-care company. Three parts of the law meet here.

The ingredient test applies to them as well. Section 7.1(1) is written for “no person”, so a contractor’s product has to pass the same test, or fit an exception, as one you would apply yourself. And because the provision also reaches anyone who will “cause or permit the use”, if an unlisted product went down on your lawn for an ordinary cosmetic reason, the wording could reach the owner who arranged it. The Act does not say how that would be applied to a homeowner in a given case, so treat it as a reason to ask, not as a prediction.

The company needs a licence; you may not. Section 5(1) of the Act says no person shall perform an extermination except under a licence of a prescribed class, unless exempt. The regulation’s s.70 exemption covers a person using a Class D pesticide on premises they own or occupy, which is why you can treat your own lawn with a store product without a licence. A company working on your property is not the owner or occupier, so on the plain wording it relies on its licence.

The sign tells you what went down. On a residential lot, a person required to hold an exterminator’s licence must post signs under s.74(1): Sign C, a “Notice”, when the product’s only active ingredients are listed, and Sign D, a “Warning”, for any other pesticide. Some situations are excluded (s.74(2) and (4)), but on an ordinary front lawn, a Sign D after a routine weed treatment is the moment to ask which exception the company is relying on.

Before anything goes on your lawn

A short list to work through, depending on where you are in the process.