The chanting started before the division was called. “People over profit.” “Shame.” From the public gallery at Queen’s Park, dozens of tenants watched their MPPs vote seventy-one to forty-three to pass Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, on November 24, 2025. As security escorted one protester out, Premier Doug Ford offered a parting thought: “Go find a job, buddy.”
The bill had been time-allocated, meaning the government bypassed public hearings and compressed committee review. For a piece of legislation touching the lives of Ontario’s roughly 1.5 million renter households, that speed left tenant advocates stunned.
What Bill 60 actually changes
The bill is an omnibus, covering planning approvals, development charges, and a slew of other housing-related amendments. But it is the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act that drew the most opposition. Here is what shifts once the amendments come into force.
Fixed-term leases no longer automatically convert to month-to-month tenancies. Under the old rules, a tenant who finished a one-year lease could simply continue paying rent and stay put, with the lease rolling over indefinitely. That security of tenure, a bedrock principle of Ontario rental law for decades, is gone. Landlords can now renegotiate terms or decline to renew altogether.
Seven days. That is the new notice period before a landlord can file an eviction application for unpaid rent. Previously it was 14. The appeal window for Landlord and Tenant Board decisions has been cut from 30 days to 15.
For personal-use evictions (the “my nephew needs the unit” scenario that tenants dread), landlords who give 120 days’ notice no longer owe one month’s rent in compensation. The requirement for renoviction applications did tighten in one respect: landlords filing an N13 must now produce a report from an engineer or architect confirming that vacancy is necessary. A small concession in a bill that otherwise tilts the board.
Context: “Security of tenure” is the principle that lets tenants remain in their homes indefinitely, as long as they pay rent and follow the lease. Ontario has protected this right since the Tenant Protection Act of 1997. Bill 60’s fixed-term lease changes are the first direct erosion of that principle in nearly three decades.
One provision drew particular attention: tenants must now pay 50% of claimed rent arrears before they can raise maintenance complaints in a non-payment hearing. Advocates call this a gag rule. If your landlord has not fixed the heating for two months and you withheld rent over it, you now need to pay half the arrears before the Board will hear about the broken furnace.
The protest and the pushback
The vote did not happen quietly.
Thousands of tenants marched through downtown Toronto the weekend before the vote. Toronto’s city council had already warned the legislation would worsen the homelessness crisis. A coalition of 132 community groups signed an open letter calling on the Ford government to scrap the changes.
"Doug Ford's Conservatives have rammed through yet another harmful bill: one that puts renters at greater risk and deepens Ontario's housing crisis."
NDP Leader Marit Stiles introduced an opposition motion on November 19 calling for the immediate repeal of Bill 60, restoration of “real rent control,” establishment of vacancy control, and an end to bad-faith evictions. The motion went nowhere (opposition motions rarely do when the government holds 80 seats), but it staked out the NDP’s position for the months ahead.
The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario was blunt. ACTO warned that the bill “will weaken tenant protections and forsake security of tenure for unfettered profit-making.” Two legal clinics in southwestern Ontario joined the chorus, arguing the changes would expedite evictions and deepen homelessness.
The government’s defence: faster processes benefit everyone, including tenants stuck in a backlogged system. Housing Minister Rob Flack initially floated the idea of consulting on ending security of tenure entirely. He walked that back after public outcry.
The LTB backlog that won’t quit
Bill 60 does not exist in a vacuum. It lands on top of a Landlord and Tenant Board that has been struggling for years.
53,000 cases were unresolved as of the end of the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to Ontario’s Ombudsman. The backlog ballooned after the Board’s “digital-first” pivot during the pandemic, a transition that, by most accounts, created more problems than it solved.
LTB Case Backlog
Tribunals Ontario says the backlog fell roughly 20% by late 2024, and the Board was on track to resolve over 100,000 cases that year. But advocates point out the Board is using far more adjudicators to do the same volume of work that fewer handled before the digital switch. More bodies, same throughput. Not exactly a success story.
Bill 227, a smaller procedural bill, tries to smooth things further by letting new adjudicators pick up hearings mid-stream when the original adjudicator leaves, and by allowing the Board to overlook minor application errors. Incremental fixes for a structural problem.
The rent picture
While Queen’s Park rewrites the rules, the market is shifting on its own.
Ontario’s 2026 rent increase guideline is 2.1%, the lowest in four years and down from 2.5% in both 2024 and 2025. The guideline is capped at 2.5% by law, pegged to the Ontario Consumer Price Index. But here is the catch that has existed since 2018: rent control only applies to units first occupied before November 15, 2018. Anything newer is exempt. No cap. No guideline.
Context: Ontario removed rent control on new units in 2018 under the Ford government. The Liberals had briefly extended rent control to all units in 2017, but the PCs reversed course. This means the growing share of Ontario’s rental stock, newer purpose-built apartments and condos, faces no limit on annual increases.
Toronto’s average one-bedroom rent hit $1,991 per month in February 2026, actually down $165 year-over-year. Vacancy rates in Ontario’s major centres have climbed to around 4% for purpose-built apartments, well above the national average. In Ottawa, newer units sit at 6.7% vacancy.
The reason is not a sudden abundance of generosity from the development industry. Immigration policy changes have sharply reduced new arrivals. Study and work permit holders in the 15-to-34 demographic, the cohort that fills rental apartments, have been leaving Ontario. Demand dropped. Listings piled up.
That softening is cold comfort for tenants facing eviction under the new Bill 60 timelines. A lower average rent does not help if you have seven days to come up with back rent before your landlord files at the LTB.
What comes next
The Bill 60 amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act are not yet in force. Tribunals Ontario says it is preparing implementation in coordination with the provincial government. New LTB procedures and forms will be updated when the changes take effect.
The NDP has made repeal a talking point, but with 27 seats against the PCs’ 80, the math is not on their side. The Liberals, rebuilding under interim leader John Fraser, have been quieter on the file. The Greens’ Mike Schreiner has spoken against the bill but commands two seats.
For now, tenant organizations are focused on the implementation details: what the new hearing procedures will look like, how the 50% arrears prepayment rule will work in practice, and whether the renoviction engineering-report requirement will actually deter bad-faith N13 applications (good luck with that).
The rental market might be softening, but the rules governing it just got harder for the people who rent.
Sources and verification: Bill 60 vote count (71-43) and passage date (November 24, 2025) confirmed via CP24 and TorontoToday reporting. The 53,057 LTB backlog figure comes from the Ontario Ombudsman’s investigation and Tribunals Ontario data. Toronto average rent ($1,991/month for one-bedroom, February 2026) sourced from liv.rent’s Ontario Rent Report. The 2.1% rent guideline for 2026 confirmed via the Ontario government’s residential rent increases page. The coalition of 132 community groups opposing the bill was reported by CBC News. Catherine McKenney’s quote sourced from Ontario NDP press releases. Vacancy rate figures from CMHC’s 2025 Rental Market Report.
Track how your MPP voted on Bill 60 and other housing legislation at Ontario Pulse.