Ontario’s Bill 60 Will Make it Easier and Faster for Landlords to Evict Tenants

The Government of Ontario recently proposed changes to the province’s Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) that will make it easier and faster for landlords to evict tenants.

These changes, outlined in Bill 60, Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act 2025, will not increase rental housing supply, as argued by the provincial government in their technical briefing. It will only worsen the homelessness crisis and significantly erode tenant protections.

While the Ford government no longer plans to move forward with consultations that would consider “alternative options on lease agreement expiry” – which would essentially herald the demise of rent control – Bill 60 still contains almost a dozen provisions that will severely weaken security of tenure for tenants in Ontario and speed up evictions.

Highlighting Some of Bill 60’s Proposed Changes and Corresponding Impacts

1) Reducing rent arrears notice periods in half, from 14 days to seven days.

For tenants who do not pay their rent on time, a landlord can issue an N4 notice of eviction on the day after the rent is due. Under current RTA guidelines, the termination date of the tenancy must be 14 days after the notice is given to the tenant. If a tenant does not pay the rent before the termination date, the landlord can file an L1 application, a formal request to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) to evict a tenant for non-payment of rent and to collect rent arrears. Bill 60 proposes to cut this time in half, from 14 days to seven days.

This means tenants will only have seven days to find and access funds from social service organizations or rent bank programs to pay their rental arrears before an eviction is filed. Considering capacity issues and time required to process applications for assistance, giving tenants only seven days appears to be a significant structural barrier that will prevent tenants from obtaining any meaningful assistance. This will likely serve to further burden the LTB with even more applications.

2) Preventing tenants from raising new issues at LTB rent arrears hearings, unless they pay 50% of rent arrears claimed by the landlord.

Current legislation allows tenants to raise new issues at a Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) rent arrears hearing – such as health and safety concerns or landlord harassment. Requiring tenants to pay 50% of calculated arrears in order to present a counterclaim poses a significant barrier. The calculation of arrears owed may also contain errors. Moreover, Bill 60 suggests these changes “may reduce instances of tenants who withhold rent in bad faith.”

There is a fundamental power imbalance between landlords and tenants. One way tenants are attempting to address this asymmetrical power dynamic is through collective action, such as rent strikes. These have become an effective tool for challenging rent increases in Ontario and beyond. This proposed change undermines the ability of tenants to resist unjustified rent increases and related forms of harassment. It also signals a massive blow against access to justice and procedural fairness. It creates a pay-to-access legal system, at a price set by landlords, and unchecked by the LTB until after the fact.

3) Reducing the time available for tenants to appeal LTB decisions from 30 days to 15 days.

Both landlords and tenants currently have 30 days to request a review of an LTB decision or final order. Tenants are already experiencing difficulties obtaining assistance within this 30-day window from legal aid clinics that are working well beyond capacity. Cutting the time tenants have to adequately secure legal help only exacerbates an already difficult situation.

4) Eliminating the requirement to provide one-month compensation to tenants for no-fault “landlord own-use” evictions (N12) if a four-month notice is provided.

In Ontario, landlords can evict a tenant to repossess a rental unit for themselves or for a family member or caregiver who must move into the unit for a period of a year. Under current legislation, the landlord must provide compensation equal to one month’s rent or offer the tenant another rental unit that is acceptable. Bill 60 seeks to change these rules.

In cases where a landlord provides a four-month notice, they will no longer be required to provide compensation or offer another unit. While insufficient in today’s tight rental market, the one-month compensation still helped tenants with rental deposits (usually both first and last month’s rent is required to be paid to secure a new rental unit, which tenants often do not have available at short notice) or moving costs. Further, the increase in cases of repossessions in cities like Toronto suggest some of these own-use evictions may be implemented in bad-faith. Removing the one-month compensation only serves to make it easier for bad actors to continue to execute bad-faith evictions.

5) Removing the discretion of an LTB adjudicator to postpone the enforcement of an eviction order.

Adjudicators with the Landlord Tenant Board (LTB) have the authority to postpone the enforcement of eviction orders at their full discretion. Ontario, along with Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Northwest Territories have legislation that allows adjudicators to consider the fairness of the eviction rather than solely ensuring technical or procedural requirements are met. Also known as proportionality, it is a framework used to determine whether an eviction is necessary. It requires adjudicators to consider all the circumstances surrounding an eviction case and whether there are reasonable alternatives to eviction. Bill 60 plans to restrict adjudicators’ ability to exercise discretion, by creating a closed list of specific conditions under which they can postpone the enforcement of an eviction order.

6) Tribunals Ontario to explore options to increase access to LTB decision orders.

At face value, increasing access and transparency of LTB decisions sounds like a good idea. Although, while more open data can help with evictions research, making evictions and tenant information more publicly available can also severely harm tenants. Tenant screening services use open data to place tenants on blacklists, which affects their ability to access future rental housing.

Bill 60 Will Worsen Ontario’s Homelessness Crisis

In 2024, a study by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) found that more than 80,000 Ontarians were homeless, an increase of 25% since 2022. While most unhoused individuals live in urban centres, homelessness has grown by more than 150% in rural communities. In Northern Ontario, homelessness has increased 204%, four times as fast as the rest of the province over the same period. Further, a growing proportion of the homeless population in Ontario is the result of recent evictions. For example, in York Region, 42% of homeless survey respondents reported that eviction was the reason for their most recent housing loss. Similarly, in Greater Sudbury, 44% of respondents attributed their housing loss to eviction.