Liens, the lien fund and trust in Alberta

Everything on this page is private and municipal work under the Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act, RSA 2000, c P-26.4, in force in that form from 29 August 2022. On provincial Crown public works none of it applies: there is no lien, no lien fund and no trust of the Crown's money, and that is dealt with in its own section below. Saying which side of the public/private line you are on is not a formality in Alberta. It is the single most common way to be wrong about the province.

This page sits under the Alberta place hub, which carries the two-Act split and the citation eras in full, and alongside the Alberta delay claim clocks, which list every deadline in one table. What changes at a provincial border across Canada is set out in the provincial comparison.

Does an Alberta lien secure a delay or prolongation claim?

Partly, and on a test that exists nowhere else in Canada. An Alberta lien secures the contract price and amounts remaining due. A delay or prolongation claim rides along only so far as the cost was incurred performing the liened work itself. The line is factual, not categorical, which is both the opportunity and the difficulty: it turns on evidence about where the cost was incurred rather than on how the head of loss is labelled.

Krupp Canada Inc v JV Driver Projects Inc, 2014 ABQB 259, a decision of Master Robertson under the Builders' Lien Act, RSA 2000, c B-7, which is what the Act was called at the time, supplies the framework in three parts. First, a contractor may lien for work done or materials used in the improvement, including amounts remaining due under the contract or on quantum meruit. Second, and this is the load-bearing proposition, damages (including delay damages) form part of the lien only where they "relate directly to the work that is the subject of the lien". The worked example is the useful part: lost productivity on the liened project supports the lien, damages for inability to work elsewhere do not. Third, on an application to reduce a lien the applicant must show no genuine issue of material fact requiring trial, so uncertainty favours the lien claimant until trial.

CONFLICT The corpus records a real dispute about what Krupp actually decided, and it must be carried in the sentence rather than buried: one Alberta firm reads the decision as holding that delay damages can be included in the lien where directly related to the liened work, a substantial international source indexes the same decision for the opposite headline (that delay damages are "not generally lienable") and the Alberta Construction Association's own guide states flatly that damage claims cannot generally be included, while allowing contractual interest. A reconciliation is available but unsourced, and is recorded in the corpus as UNVERIFIED: Krupp is coherent if read as a general rule that damages are not lienable, subject to a narrow exception for cost consequences directly attributable to performing the liened work, paradigmatically lost productivity on that project. The corpus calls this the single most valuable Alberta item to verify.

PME Inc v Enerkem Alberta Biofuels LP, 2021 ABQB 889, Master Schlosser, again under the Builders' Lien Act, c B-7, is the later and narrower authority, and it pushes the other way. Liens could secure only the conditionally admitted amounts for unpaid holdback and invoices under the written stipulated-price contracts, quantum meruit amounts were excluded from the lien and sent to trial, the court finding "no power" under the Act to substitute the parties' contractual obligations even where different work was in fact performed. SINGLE-SOURCE Master Schlosser did not cite Krupp, a point the commentator notes expressly. The two decisions sit in unresolved tension, neither has been considered by the Alberta Court of Appeal, and there is no appellate resolution.

The working synthesis the corpus offers, itself marked UNVERIFIED, is this. An Alberta lien secures the contract price and amounts "remaining due". A delay or prolongation claim is lienable only to the extent it is either an amount remaining due under the contract, or a cost directly attributable to performing the liened work. With PME casting doubt on anything beyond the contractual entitlement. Extended head-office overhead and lost profit have no Alberta authority supporting lienability, and should not be advanced as lien amounts on the strength of Krupp.

Layer: jurisdictional. Every row rests on secondary sources, no judgment and no consolidated statute was read in original form. Quebec is civil law and is treated separately, the common-law propositions above do not extend to it.

That is why the same delay claim is secured differently on either side of a provincial border. The Ontario position, including what happens to extended equipment and to overhead, is at liens, holdback and security in Ontario, the Quebec position, where the hypothèque légale secures only plus-value, starts at the Quebec hub.

The lien fund is not the trust. And on a delayed project the difference decides everything

These are two separate mechanisms with different triggers, and conflating them is a recorded error the corpus corrects in terms. The major and minor lien funds are owner-held security available to lien claimants. The s 22 trust is a personal obligation attaching to money someone has actually received, and in Alberta it arises only after a Certificate of Substantial Performance. A contractor can have a perfectly good lien fund claim and no trust claim at all, and on a delayed project that is the normal case rather than the exception.

Taking the funds first. On private and municipal work under the PPCLA, RSA 2000, c P-26.4, the major lien fund is for those who worked before the Certificate of Substantial Performance and accrues from day one. The minor lien fund arises after the certificate, for post-certificate work. Each fund has two parts: Part A is the 10% statutory holdback of the value of work, and Part B is the "amount payable", any unpaid amount owing to the contractor when a lien is registered. SINGLE-SOURCE Non-general-contractor claimants must file within 60 days of the certificate being posted to reach the major lien fund.

The trust is a different animal. PPCLA s 22: formerly Builders' Lien Act, RSA 2000, c B-7, s 22, provides that a person who receives payment holds it in trust for those who provided work or materials, to the extent that person owes them money. But it arises only on payments received after a Certificate of Substantial Performance has been issued. ATB Financial v DLM Oilfield Enterprises Ltd, 2020 ABQB 562 is the authority: an owner paid the contractor after the contractor's receiver was appointed, unpaid subcontractors had liened, no certificate had been issued, so no s 22 trust existed and the unjust-enrichment argument failed because the owner–contractor contract precluded restitution.

A subcontractor with a prolongation claim on an Alberta project that never reaches a Certificate of Substantial Performance has no trust claim at all, and "never reaches substantial performance" is exactly what happens on terminated and abandoned delayed projects. The gap bites hardest in precisely the fact pattern delay claims arise in.

Draw the consequence out, because it is the most useful sentence on this page. A project that slips, then stops. The owner runs out of money, the contractor is terminated, the job is abandoned, never gets a Certificate of Substantial Performance. On that project there is no trust, so there is no personal claim against the directing minds who received and misapplied the money, and no breach-of-trust exposure to leverage. What is left is the lien against the land, the contract claim against the party above, and whatever bond exists. That is a materially weaker position than a subcontractor in the same situation in Ontario would be in, and it is not obvious from the face of the Act.

Two qualifications. SINGLE-SOURCE Bill 37. The Builders' Lien (Prompt Payment) Amendment Act, 2020, in force 29 August 2022, did not extend the s 22 trust to pre-certificate payments, and it is UNVERIFIED whether Bill 30 (2024), the Service Alberta Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 in force 1 April 2025, changed this: nothing located suggests it did. And the trust does reach land the lien cannot. Iona Contractors Ltd v Guarantee Company of North America for which the corpus did not capture the Alberta neutral citations, and where leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was denied in 2016, records the s 22 trust as potentially still applying to work on federal airport lands that were themselves non-lienable. So trust and lien do not have the same territorial reach, and on non-lienable land the trust is worth asking about, provided a certificate has issued.

One further practical warning about the funds. The PPCLA does not require holdback to be sequestered in a separate account. Owners may satisfy the obligation by cash retention, by balance-sheet notation, by letter of credit, by bond or by promissory note. Alberta holdback is a notional fund, so on an insolvent-owner delayed project there may be nothing there and, on the rule above, no trust before the certificate. That combination is the Alberta payment-security worst case, and delay is how a project gets there.

The clocks: preservation, perfection and the funds

Those are the private-sector figures, and the minimum lien claim is $700. The two distinct clocks matter more than they look: an Alberta contractor working across a mixed site can be inside a 60-day period on some of its work and a 90-day period on the rest, and the categories are definitional rather than obvious. Register the lien and the claim dies without an action, commence the action and omit the certificate of lis pendens within the 180 days and the same thing happens.

The funds run on their own retention clocks. The major lien fund is retained for 60 days after the Certificate of Substantial Performance. Or after completion where no certificate is issued, and 90 days for the oil-and-gas and concrete categories. The minor lien fund is retained for 60 days after completion of the prime contract, again 90 for the special categories.

On wellsite and industrial work two further points change the mechanics rather than the timing. The lien attaches to the mineral rather than to ordinary fee simple land, and where the minerals are Crown-owned it is registered with the Minister of Energy rather than at Land Titles, getting the registry wrong is fatal in the same way as missing the period. And CONFLICT the corpus records sources disagreeing between s 6 and s 62 for the rule that the lien attaches to all estates and interests in the mineral except the fee simple, both section references are to the Builders' Lien Act, RSA 2000, c B-7, and both are UNVERIFIED under the renumbered PPCLA. The definitional problem with "oil or gas well", the split-period site and the different registry are dealt with at oil, gas and industrial work in Alberta.

There is also a holdback-release clock that a delayed project can switch on. PPCLA s 24.1 requires progressive release of holdback where the contract, at the time it is entered into, exceeds $10,000,000 and either the completion schedule is longer than one year or the contract provides for phased release at defined milestones. The default matters: a contract over $10M running more than a year with no milestone regime still obliges the owner to release holdback annually, phased releases occurring within one-year intervals. SINGLE-SOURCE s 24.1(c) preserves the pre-existing condition that the property be lien-free at the point of release. UNVERIFIED The notice mechanics, whether a notice of intention to release must be published or served, and on whom, and whether each progressive release starts a fresh 60-day lien period for the released phase could not be established from any source, and the corpus flags it as a priority verification item.

Why that belongs on a delay page: on a project that has slipped past twelve months, the $10M/one-year trigger converts holdback from a lump at the end into an annual entitlement. A contractor running a prolongation claim gains a cash-flow lever, and equally an owner facing an extension-of-time dispute cannot use holdback as indefinite leverage on a job of that size. Note how much narrower Alberta's version is than Ontario's: Ontario's annual release applies to any contract longer than one year with no value threshold, and the owner's notice-of-non-payment right at s 27.1 has been repealed outright. Alberta's applies only above $10M and Alberta has no equivalent repeal.

No liens against Crown land. And on a government job there may be nothing but the bond

State this flat, because it removes an entire remedy. There are no liens against provincial or federal Crown land. And PPCLA s 1.1 excludes "public works" as defined in the Public Works Act, RSA 2000, c P-46, and agreements with the provincial Crown or a Crown agent from the PPCLA altogether. So on an Alberta provincial government job the lien route does not exist, the lien funds do not exist, and there is no trust of the Crown's money.

What a delay claimant below first tier is left with on that job is short: the contract claim against the party immediately above, plus the labour and material payment bond if there is one. The bond is frequently the whole security position, which means the bond's own notice and limitation conditions become as important as any statutory clock, and they are creatures of the bond wording, not of the Act.

The Crown's own claim position is correspondingly stronger. SINGLE-SOURCE PWA s 11(3) expands the Crown's right to withhold for late performance to "any" money owed, not only money owing on the contract in question. So one delayed provincial project can bleed cash from another one the same contractor is performing. There is no private-sector analogue to that.

Two further public-side points belong here because there is no separate page for Alberta public works. First, the claim gate on a provincial job is PWA s 14(3): notice of claim by registered mail within 45 days, specifying nature and amount, and compliance is strict. Graham Construction and Engineering Inc v Alberta (Infrastructure), 2021 ABQB 184 is the demonstration: 17 claimants who used the statutory form were paid, 32, including Graham, were shut out. Second, delay is expressly not adjudicable on Alberta provincial public works: PWA s 14.3(2), introduced by Bill 30 (2024) and in force 1 April 2025, excludes changes or delays to a construction schedule, completion or milestone dates, and disputes over the interpretation of relief events, designated changes in law, remedial actions and force majeure. Every category an extension-of-time claim lives in, by name. Nothing like it exists elsewhere in Canada. The private-sector position is the opposite, and is at prompt payment and adjudication in Alberta.

Set-off of delay damages against the funds

On private and municipal work under the PPCLA, RSA 2000, c P-26.4, the two parts of the lien fund behave differently when an owner or general contractor wants to set off delay damages. Part A (the 10% statutory holdback) generally cannot be set off against, being protected for subcontractor benefit. Part B (the "amount payable") is available for set-off for deficiencies and completion costs arising from contractor default. So the statutory 10% is close to bulletproof against a delay counterclaim, and the real fight is over Part B and over ordinary progress payments.

In that fight the notice-and-cure requirement is doing most of the work. Tempo Alberta Electrical Contractors Co Ltd v Man-Shield Construction Inc, 2023 ABKB 44 gave the subcontractor partial summary judgment of $678,261: a set-off and backcharge claim for temporary power, insufficient staffing and deficiencies did not constitute a genuine defence sufficient to resist judgment, because the general contractor had not given written notice of the deficiencies or an opportunity to cure. Delay damages were expressly reserved for trial, which is the pattern in Alberta, where payment and lien claims go summarily and delay claims do not. SINGLE-SOURCE A.G. Clark Holdings Ltd v 1352986 Alberta Ltd, 2023 ABKB 219 points the same way: an owner's asserted delay and quality set-off failed on the evidence against a documented lien claim.

The operational reading for a party withholding for delay on private work is therefore: give written notice, give an opportunity to cure, document the deficiency contemporaneously, and expect to lose Part A regardless. On a provincial job the analysis is different again, because the Crown's s 11(3) withholding right under the Public Works Act, RSA 2000, c P-46 reaches beyond the contract in dispute.

Cite the right chapter, or the research silently fails

The Alberta lien statute changed its name and its chapter letter on 29 August 2022. Before that date it is the Builders' Lien Act, RSA 2000, c B-7, from that date it is the Prompt Payment and Construction Lien Act, RSA 2000, c P-26.4, renamed by Bill 37, the Builders' Lien (Prompt Payment) Amendment Act, 2020. The chapter letter went B-7 → P-26.4. The renumbering is only an open question in one place: the mineral-lien sections (s 6, s 6(2), s 6(3), s 62 and s 54) are cited to c B-7 and are UNVERIFIED under the renumbered PPCLA. The PPCLA provisions this page relies on ss 1.1, 22, 24.1, 32.1 to 32.5, 33.4 and 33.6(5), are recorded in the corpus as verified, and can be cited by their PPCLA numbers.

The consequence is practical rather than pedantic. Krupp, PME v Enerkem, ATB Financial v DLM and Davidson Well Drilling, 2016 ABQB 416 the decision that brought exploratory drilling on Syncrude oil sands mining sites inside the 90-day wellsite lien period, SINGLE-SOURCE, are between them most of the useful Alberta lien and delay material. All four predate 29 August 2022 and all are cited to c B-7. A search, database filter or citator query that indexes only c P-26.4 silently drops all four. It returns a short list and no error message, which is the worst failure mode research can have. Use c P-26.4 only for the period from 29 August 2022.

The court renaming is the parallel trap. The Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta became the Court of King's Bench on 8 September 2022 (mid-year, not at the year boundary) so Alberta 2022 carries both 2022 ABQB nnn (to 7 September) and 2022 ABKB nnn (from 8 September). CONFLICT An ABQB citation dated 2023 or later is almost certainly a transcription error for ABKB, do not propagate it. And Masters and Masters in Chambers became Applications Judges in the same period, which matters here more than almost anywhere else, because the Alberta lien-and-delay jurisprudence is largely Master-level: Krupp is Master Robertson, PME is Master Schlosser. Finally, always give the year with a Bill 30: Bill 30 (2024) is the Service Alberta Statutes Amendment Act, 2024, whose PPCLA and PWA amendments came into force 1 April 2025, while Bill 30 (2026) is the Expedited 120-Day Approvals Act, UNVERIFIED as to status.

Lien it or sue on it? What a contractor with a delay claim actually does

Lien the parts that are clearly lienable, sue for the rest, and do not let the lien deadline decide the shape of the claim. On private and municipal work the amounts "remaining due" under the contract go in the lien without argument, lost productivity incurred on this project goes in as a Krupp claim, knowing the holding is contested, extended head-office overhead and lost profit stay out, because no Alberta authority supports them and PME points away from them. The residue is a contract claim, and it is a contract claim whether or not there is also a lien.

Three features of the Alberta landscape push in the same direction. The lien-reduction test favours the claimant, Krupp point 3 requires the applicant to show no genuine issue of material fact requiring trial. So an arguable productivity claim tends to survive to trial rather than being stripped out early. The trust will usually be unavailable on a delayed project, so there is no personal remedy to fall back on. And the holdback need not be segregated, so the security may be notional in any event.

The last item is not housekeeping. A delay claim in Alberta is usually decided on the contract and the schedule evidence, but whether it is secured while that fight runs is decided by the lien fund, the trust trigger and the calendar. And by whether the research that framed the position found the four decisions that a chapter-letter filter quietly hides.

About this material Library content is general information about construction claim practice, not legal advice. Entitlement, deadlines and procedure are governed by your own contract and by the law of the place the work is performed. Reviewed August 9, 2026 · Report a correction