Tenant advocates and Ontario’s NDP are fiercely criticizing Premier Doug Ford’s government over Bill 60, legislation they say would erode tenants’ rights and fast-track evictions across the province.
At a joint news conference Thursday at Queen’s Park, Chiara Padovani of the York-South Weston Tenants Union called the bill “a declaration of war on tenants,” accusing the government of siding with large corporate landlords. “Doug Ford and this PC government with Bill 60 is just looking to make it easier and faster to evict tenants who have lived in their homes for years so landlords can skirt rent control by jacking up rents for the next tenant,” she said.
The omnibus bill, introduced last week, includes sweeping changes to landlord-tenant procedures. Among them, it cuts the grace period for late rent evictions from 14 days to seven, halves the review window for appealing tribunal decisions from 30 to 15 days, and bars tenants from introducing new issues at hearings without prior notice.
The bill also relaxes rules for landlords reclaiming properties for personal use — removing the requirement to compensate tenants if they give at least 120 days’ notice. Only landlords providing less notice would need to pay one month’s rent or offer a comparable unit.
Housing Minister Rob Flack defended the reforms, saying they aim to “bring balance and fairness to all.” He insisted that “tenants have tremendous protections” and that the changes would help clear the Landlord and Tenant Board’s (LTB) massive backlog of cases while targeting “bad actors.”
Critics, however, argue the reforms will only deepen the imbalance between landlords and renters. Padovani noted that eviction hearings are processed within three months, while complaints filed by tenants often take a year or longer to be heard. “Renters get eaten up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at that place,” she said.
The Ford government has already walked back one of Bill 60’s most controversial proposals — a plan to review “security of tenure,” the long-standing rule guaranteeing tenants the right to stay in their home indefinitely as long as they follow their lease and the Residential Tenancies Act. After public outcry, the province said it would not pursue consultations on ending indefinite leases but left the rest of the bill intact.
NDP MPP Kristyn Wong-Tam blasted the government for “failing to fix a broken system” at the LTB and instead introducing measures that “hurt tenants while rewarding landlords.”
Tenant unions across the province are now mobilizing against the bill, vowing to fight what they describe as a coordinated attempt to roll back renters’ rights in Ontario.