Four coverages are the law. The rest is yours to decide.

Start with the shape of the thing. An Ontario auto policy is two documents pretending to be one: a statute you can’t opt out of, and a set of purchases stapled to it. Insurers quote them together, which is convenient for them and confusing for you — because when the premium moves, you can rarely tell which half moved.

If your car injures someone or damages their property, this pays. It is mandatory in every Canadian province, and in Ontario the statutory minimum — $200,000 — is set by the Insurance Act1 — though almost nobody carries the minimum, because the minimum predates what a serious injury actually costs.

The limit you choose above the floor is technically a decision — but it’s the one place in the policy where the prudent answer and the default answer are the same, so we treat the whole section as law territory.

This is the no-fault half: it pays for your own recovery regardless of who caused the collision. Since July 2026 the mandatory core is medical, rehabilitation and attendant care2 — and here the drafting matters.

When another driver damages your car and you’re not at fault, your own insurer pays — that’s DCPD. It sits in the mandatory column with one unusual property: since 2024, you can formally sign it away with an endorsement (OPCF 49)3 — and signing also removes Collision, Upset and All Perils coverage. Mandatory-with-a-documented-exit is not the same as optional — the diagram shows it solid with a footnote, not dashed.

Now the line crosses. Everything from here down is a purchase — and the honest way to present purchases is side by side with what the law already gave you:

A lower premium usually means something moved from the right column to “declined.” Sometimes that’s exactly right — a fifteen-year-old car may not be worth insuring against its own repair bill. The failure mode isn’t declining coverage; it’s discovering at claim time that you had4.

The reform’s quietest change is who optional benefits reach. Post-reform they cover the named insured, spouse, dependants and listed drivers — not pedestrians, cyclists, or uninsured passengers5. That eligibility narrowing sits underneath the headline, and it’s the part worth reading twice before you decline anything.

If people outside that circle ride in your car regularly, the decision you’re making covers them too — they just don’t get a vote.