Rental rules in Ontario change today. Here’s what tenants and landlords need to know

A batch of changes to Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) comes into force on Monday, including shorter deadlines for tenants who landlords say have fallen behind on rent payments. 

The RTA amendments, some of which were brought into force on July 1, come out of two bills — Bill 60 and Bill 97.

Earlier in the summer, they were described by a spokesperson for Ontario’s housing minister as being necessary to “restore balance and rebuild confidence in Ontario’s rental housing market.” 

As of Monday, Sept. 21, here are the major changes that will impact both tenants and landlords: 

Ontario has billed the changes to the RTA as a way to address delays and backlogs at Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), where non-urgent applications have been known to sit for months before being considered. 

A spokesperson for Tribunals Ontario, which oversees the LTB, told CBC News it’s been preparing for the RTA updates with “no impact anticipated on caseload or application processing times.” 

But both landlord groups and some tenant advocates have questioned whether the changes will mean fewer LTB delays.

The halved deadline to pay back late rent “just means you can file the paperwork a little sooner at the LTB,” said Kayla Andrade, founder of the landlord advocacy group Ontario Landlords Watch. 

“It doesn’t mean that you’re going to get your hearing any faster.” 

The Small Ownership Landlords of Ontario group has raised similar concerns, arguing that the LTB should allow landlords to skip a hearing altogether for non-payment of rent disputes and instead be able to use a faster-moving mediation process. 

Andrade is supportive of the formalizing of the definition of “persistent non-payment of rent,” telling CBC News that previously, “you didn’t know… exactly what the [adjudicator] would consider as persistent late payments. It’s good to have something concrete.” 

Tenant organizations have also argued that the RTA updates fail to address the cause of bottlenecks at the LTB.

In a release, the Federation of Metro Tenants’ Associations said efficiency was merely a “smokescreen” for “eroding tenants’ rights.” 

Dania Majid, director of duty counsel for the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, told CBC News that her legal clinic is deeply concerned that the changes make it easier for tenants to be evicted. But that wouldn’t necessarily happen faster, she said.

The switch from 14 to seven days to repay rent will “trigger more hearings. And that’s going to trigger a backlog,” she said. 

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Majid says she expects a similar outcome from one of the earlier July 1 RTA updates, which halves the amount of time for tenants and landlords to request a review of an LTB decision. 

“If you’re not able to provide your materials in time at the LTB to request a review there, people are going to end up at the divisional court and that’s going to create a backlog there,” she said. 

Then there’s the requirement that tenants pay 50 per cent of the unpaid rent they allegedly owe in order to raise other complaints at their eviction hearing. 

“Now the tenant has to file a separate application to raise these issues… when the entire matter could have just been handled at the same hearing,” said Majid

CBC News asked the Ministry of Housing how tenants can recover the money they paid before a hearing if it’s found they don’t actually owe it. The ministry did not reply by publication time.