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Bill 60 Statement

Ever since the pandemic, landlords and tenants have seen increasing delays before the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB). Landlords now wait months to get a hearing and tenants must wait years to get their applications heard. Despite the LTB hiring more staff to operate a digital-first approach to solving the problem, the delays persist and grow. 

Bill 60 proposes a number of changes that are supposed to address delays at the LTB. However, some of them would actually add to the delays and all of them would take away tenant rights, including:

  • Permitting landlords to apply to the LTB after giving the tenant 7 days to pay overdue rent instead of 14 days won’t make it any faster when it reaches the LTB. In fact, having to deal with more cases where the tenant paid in the meantime will add unnecessary applications to the system.
  • Removing the tenant right to raise serious repairs and maintenance issues unless 50% of the (as yet unproven) rent claimed has first been paid, raises another barrier – especially for low income tenants. The focus should be on getting to hearings faster.
  • Shortening the time for either landlords or tenants to file a Request to Review from 30 to 15 days following the Order will likely just lead to the LTB having to address even more extension of time arguments.

Other proposed changes include restricting the LTB in temporarily postponing evictions, defining “persistent late pay of rent” so as to reduce the LTB’s ability to grant relief from eviction, making it harder for tenants to set aside orders made without hearings, and removing one month’s rent compensation for tenants facing “personal use evictions” where four months notice is given instead of two. All of these proposals are aimed at tenants. None of these are necessary to achieve a more efficient tribunal.

The Landlord and Tenant Board operated much more efficiently in person before the pandemic. Landlords and tenants agree the common sense solution is to return to that method of adjudication. Trimming the rights of tenants as an alternative would be an injustice.