Restoring Possession to Wrongfully Evicted Tenants

ACTO and TDCP staff met with senior policy and legal staff from the Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG), the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing (MMAH), and the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal (ORHT) in February 2002 to make the case for the sheriff's office to establish an expedited process to restore wrongfully evicted tenants to their housing. ACTO also asked for the sheriff to have the ability to waive the $300+ fee that tenants have to pay to get the sheriff to put them back into their housing.

ACTO was notified by staff in the Ministry of the Attorney General that -- effective July 5, 2002 - the Sherriff's Procedure Manual was changed to require immediate, priority restoration of a rental unit to a tenant when the locks have been illegally changed, even if the landlord has moved someone else into the unit. Also in response to ACTO's proposals, the ORHT has developed a new brochure on illegal evictions and has made revisions to its Application Resolution Manual. Finally, the government introduced new legislation and regulations allowing the sheriff to waive their fees in appropriate eviction cases.

Effective January 28, 2005 the government amended the Administration of Justice Act provide a fee waiver mechanism for persons who might otherwise be denied access to justice because of their financial circumstances and also passed a regulation that sets out the process for submitting a fee waiver request and the financial eligibility criteria that will be applied to such a request.