Proposed changes to landlord tenant rules in Ontario have renters in a panic

A new omnibus bill tabled in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario has some people celebrating, but others feeling wary due to the changes it proposes to landlord and tenant rules in the province.

Premier Doug Ford's Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act 2025 is one in a line of new pieces of legislation aimed to address the province's housing crisis by cutting the bureaucracy surrounding the construction of new homes (and other infrastructure), along with decreasing backlogs at the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB), among other things.

Announced on Thursday, the bill's key actions include reviewing the Ontario Building Code to "reduce regulatory burdens and costs," streamlining building approvals, rolling out a single set of road construction standards to apply province-wide, and "improving the speed and fairness of processes" while also "limiting bad actors from abusing the system" at the LTB.  

It has been welcomed by organizations like the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO), and the Ontario Home Builders' Association (OHBA), who were all quoted in the Province's official press release.

But some renters who have examined the bill more closely are worried about what it could mean for their low-rent apartments.

In the section of the document concerning the years-long, much-bemoaned delays at the LTB, multiple initiatives are outlined, including allowing board adjudicators to postpone evictions, bringing greater transparency to LTB decisions and orders, and increasing staffing to deal with an ever-rising number of cases.

The point that has drawn concern suggests the Province look into "alternative options" to its guidelines on lease agreement expiry, which presently give tenants the right to stay put in the same unit essentially indefinitely, so long as they follow their lease agreement and adhere to the Residential Tenancies Act.

This offers much-needed security to renters, the more vulnerable of the two parties, and is called security of tenure." But, it also means that landlords can't ever end a tenancy on their own terms like tenants can; only in problem cases, like when a tenant is not paying rent or has damaged their unit, or when the landlord themselves wants to move into their own property.

And, even so, recent amendments to the terms for some of these legally valid reasons, paired with nightmarishly long wait times for LTB hearings, are making things ever more difficult for small landlords to follow through with a justified eviction.

Looking at changing the terms of lease agreement expiry would ideally, per the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, "allow landlords to control who occupies their units and for how long, allowing them to adjust tenancy arrangements based on market conditions, personal needs, or business strategies."

"This could add flexibility for some landlords in the approach to leases, potentially unlocking additional rental unit stock," it adds. Leaders have noted that some property owners have been hesitant to rent out their vacant units for fear of being locked into "evergreen leases that just go on with no end in sight."

But, without security of tenure, rent control would effectively no longer exist. Citizens are justifiably calling it a huge step backward for renters' rights, and saying it not only threatens rent control, but "all Ontario tenants with eviction and homelessness."

Without security of tenure rules, no Ontario tenant would have a right to stay in their apartment beyond their initial 1-year lease - it would be entirely up to the landlord. Long-term tenancies would simply cease to be a thing. Tenants become a fully-disempowered transient class https://t.co/RgqC3IdxAl

— Leigh Beadon (@leighbeadon) October 23, 2025

This, of course, has many in the province in a panic, facing the prospect of having to worry each year whether their landlord will opt to extend their lease. In the case where the market improves and they could potentially get more for the unit, the answer to this could be "no," leaving all tenants at risk of paying market rent, rather than a potentially far lower rent that those who have lived in the same apartment for years now benefit from.

Petitions have already been launched in response.

Rent control, though, can be a touchy or even controversial issue, despite it being resounding support in many cities, including Toronto.

Some compare it to saying "whoever has been living here the longest gets a house" in places where housing stock is limited and/or market prices are prohibitive, while others have noted (in Reddit threads on the subject) that it can "remove incentive for owners to make improvements to or maintain the property beyond the legal minimum" as "they literally will not be able to earn any more for their efforts because prices cannot be raised."

For this same reason, critics argue it can also stymie new development and lead to less rental stock, depending on how it is applied.