Ontario’s only qualification for taking 3% of another person’s property is being eighteen.

The capital is CAD $699.25 (USD $500 at 1.3985, Bank of Canada daily average, 29 October 2026 — the most recent posted rate at the time of writing) and the target is CAD $6,992.50 a month (USD $5,000), or CAD $83,910.00 a year. The claim of this edition is that Ontario operates two licensing regimes over the same estate, and the expensive one governs advice while the free one governs control.

Start with the fee itself. Ontario Regulation 26/95, made under the Substitute Decisions Act, 1992, is two pages long and its first section is the whole of the pricing. A guardian of property or an attorney under a continuing power of attorney is entitled to “3 per cent on capital and income receipts”, “3 per cent on capital and income disbursements”, and “three-fifths of 1 per cent on the annual average value of the assets as a care and management fee.” Those three clauses were substituted by O. Reg. 159/00, made 2 March 2000, filed 6 March 2000, in force 1 April 2000. They have not been touched in the 26 years and 7 months since.

Now read the enabling section, which is shorter still. Substitute Decisions Act s. 40(1): “A guardian of property or attorney under a continuing power of attorney may take annual compensation from the property in accordance with the prescribed fee scale.” Subsection (2) adds that it “may be taken monthly, quarterly or annually.” There is no application, no approval and no filing. A court-appointed guardian reaches the same scale only after an application under s. 22, an order under s. 25 that may require security, and a bar in s. 24(1) on appointing anyone who is paid to provide the person’s care. The attorney under a continuing power of attorney reaches it by being named in a document signed in front of two witnesses.

Then read s. 24(2). The bar on paid care providers “does not apply” to the spouse, partner or a relative, to the attorney for personal care, or — paragraph 3 — to “the attorney under a continuing power of attorney.” The conflict rule the legislature wrote for the supervised route has a hole in it exactly where the unsupervised route runs. British Columbia closed the same hole in the other direction: s. 18(1)(a) of its Power of Attorney Act says an adult may not name as attorney an individual who “provides personal care or health care services to the adult for compensation.”

What qualification does Ontario require? Section 5 of the Act, one sentence: “To exercise a power of decision under this Part on behalf of another person, a person must be at least eighteen years old.” That is the entirety of it. Section 10(2) imposes more conditions on the witnesses than the Act imposes on the attorney — a witness may not be the attorney’s spouse, the grantor’s child, a person under guardianship, or anyone under eighteen.

Set that beside the other licence. Ontario’s Securities Act s. 25(3) forbids anyone to “engage in the business of…advising anyone with respect to investing in, buying or selling securities” unless registered as an adviser or as an advising representative of one. Merely telling the same incapable person which fund to buy is a registration offence. Signing the order yourself, as their attorney, is not. And the Law Society Act s. 26.1(1) forbids a non-licensee to “practise law in Ontario or provide legal services in Ontario”, with s. 26.2(1) setting a fine of “not more than $25,000 for a first offence.” Preparing the continuing power of attorney for a fee is regulated conduct. Being the person it appoints is not regulated at all.

The price is not theoretical, because Ontario runs the comparable. The Public Guardian and Trustee charges the same 3%, 3% and 0.6% — its own fee page says so and links to O. Reg. 26/95 — and it publishes audited accounts. In the financial statements signed by Sidney Peters, Public Guardian and Trustee, on 25 June 2025, the administration fund earned $49,511 thousand in fees charged to estates and trusts, against net assets of estates and trusts of $3,062,604 thousand. Divide: 1.6166% of client assets a year, realised, at the scale of a three-billion-dollar book. That is the only published, audited answer to what this fee scale actually costs an estate, and it is roughly three times the 0.6% that most people notice.

The reason is the structure, and the structure is the finding. A 0.6% care fee is an annuity on stock. The two 3% legs are a tax on flow, and nothing in the regulation caps the flow or distinguishes a pension deposit from the proceeds of a house. Compensation as a percentage of assets is therefore 0.6% + 3% × turnover, where turnover is receipts plus disbursements over assets. The Public Guardian and Trustee’s realised 1.6166% implies a book-wide turnover of 33.89%. In the year the family home is sold, turnover on that client goes past 200% and the rate goes to 6.6%.

Put a number on that single transaction. On a $1,000,000 Ontario house, the capital receipt alone earns the attorney 3% — $30,000. Ontario’s own land transfer tax on the same conveyance, computed under Land Transfer Tax Act s. 2(1)(a), is $16,475. The private fee the province prescribes is 1.8209× the tax the province collects, on the same sale, and it is taken without anyone applying to anyone.

Two things make this harder than it sounds, and both are in the same statute. Section 32(7) says a guardian who takes no compensation need only exercise “the degree of care, diligence and skill that a person of ordinary prudence would exercise in the conduct of his or her own affairs”; s. 32(8) says one who takes compensation must exercise “the degree of care, diligence and skill that a person in the business of managing the property of others is required to exercise”, and s. 38(1) applies both to attorneys. Taking the 3% buys you the professional standard of care. And s. 42 lets the grantor, a dependant, the Public Guardian and Trustee or the Children’s Lawyer apply to have the accounts passed, where the court may adjust the compensation downward. The scale is prescribed; keeping it is not.

Compare the provinces that refused to prescribe anything. Québec’s Civil Code art. 2133: “Le mandat conclu entre deux personnes physiques est présumé à titre gratuit, mais le mandat professionnel est présumé à titre onéreux” [“A mandate between two natural persons is presumed to be gratuitous, but a professional mandate is presumed to be by onerous title”]. Art. 184, for a dative tutor — and by art. 266 for tutorship to an adult: “Le tuteur datif peut recevoir une rémunération que fixe le tribunal sur l’avis du conseil de tutelle…Il est tenu compte des charges de la tutelle et des revenus des biens à gérer” [“A dative tutor may receive remuneration fixed by the court on the advice of the tutorship council…Account is taken of the burdens of the tutorship and of the income of the property to be managed”]. British Columbia’s Power of Attorney Act s. 24(1): an attorney “must not be compensated…unless the enduring power of attorney expressly authorizes the compensation and sets the amount or rate.” In Québec a judge sets the number. In British Columbia the grantor sets it, in writing, in advance. In Ontario a regulation set it in March 2000 and nobody has to be told.

One number to end on, because it is the honest one. The Auditor General’s 2018 value-for-money audit counted 12,189 adults for whom the Public Guardian and Trustee was guardian of property at 31 March 2018, with average net assets of $57,946. Against the required CAD $5,190,424.38 of assets under administration, the population average implies 89.57 clients. One person cannot administer ninety estates to the s. 32(8) standard. This route reaches USD $5,000 a month only on roughly ten clients of half a million dollars each, or on the years a house sells — which is precisely why the fee structure, not the fee, is the thing to read.