FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 24, 2025
The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) is sounding the alarm on Bill 60 (Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025) which threatens to strip away essential tenant protections and weaken Ontario’s housing justice system. ACTO strongly opposes the government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act and the Landlord Tenant Board, as outlined in Bill 60. If enacted, renters in Ontario will be at great risk of evictions and sky-rocketing rents, while being unable to fully participate in hearings at the Board. Instead of addressing the real challenge of Ontario’s ongoing housing crisis, Bill 60 will weaken tenant protections and forsake security of tenure for unfettered profit-making.
1. Erosion of security of tenure and rent control
The most harmful proposed reform is the end of automatic month-to-month lease renewals instead allowing landlords to set fixed-term leases that would end after a certain period of time. This would have devastating impacts on tenants’ security of tenure, which is the legal protection against forced eviction, harassment and other threats. Allowing tenancy agreements to be adjusted based on market conditions is a win for financialized landlords and in effect ends rent control in Ontario. Because of vacancy decontrol, under this Bill, at the end of a fixed term lease, landlords can circumvent rent controls by entering into a new lease with the tenant and increase the rent to any amount they choose or force the tenant to leave. This will further drive rents higher, and place tenants at risk of evictions annually.
2. Weakening access to justice
Bill 60 proposes a number of reforms that are supposed to address delays at the LTB. However, these changes undermine fundamental tenant protections and create a false narrative that tenant rights are the reason for LTB delays. The proposed changes would cut back on the ability of tenants to challenge an unjust eviction order with only 15 days to ask for a review of an LTB order. In addition, tenants will only have 7 days instead of 14 days to pay their rent before the landlord can apply to the LTB for eviction for non-payment. Bill 60, deliberately, creates conditions that makes it nearly impossible for tenants to secure the necessary funding or legal support to save their tenancy. These changes restrict tenants’ access to justice and will lead to increased evictions and displacement.
3. Disregard for eviction prevention and the homeslessness crisis
As extensively documented, Ontario is already experiencing a homelessness crisis. A report from the Association of Municipalities of Ontario indicated that there were over 81,500 people experiencing homelessness as of 2024, a 25% increase since 2022. The homelessness crisis extends beyond urban centres, with the crisis growing fastest in rural and northern communities. Undermining security of tenure and facilitating evictions will only make this crisis worse. Rather than supporting the housing needs of Ontario households, the government is investing in more sheriffs and making it more difficult for tenants to review erroneous decisions. With the growing threat of job losses due to tariffs, workers are now facing attacks on their security of tenure that also threaten their housing.
4. Deterioriating tenant living standards and advocacy
These reforms also make it significantly more challenging for tenants to exercise their right (s.82 of the RTA) to raise their issues, such as serious repairs and maintenance complaints, during a non-payment of rent hearing. When units are in serious disrepair with impacts on tenants’ health and safety, withholding all or part of the rent to trigger an arrears hearing is often the only way to have these issues heard at the Board in a timely manner. Wait times for tenant applications at the LTB are twice as long as landlord applications, which these proposed reforms fail to address. Furthermore, requiring tenants to pay 50% of their arrears to raise their issues assumes that tenants actually owe these arrears before the matter is even heard.
5. Blaming tenants for the housing crisis
There is no argument that Ontario is facing a housing crisis. However, removing tenant protections is not the solution. We have heard similar arguments before, for example, the removal of rent control for units first occupied post-November 2018 was supposed to spur the construction of rental housing. This did not happen.
The so-called backlog is simply a pretext to erode tenants rights and speed up evictions at the board. In fact, the Executive Director of Tribunals Ontario recently stated in their 2024-25 annual report,
“I believe that we are on track to position our tribunals with minimal or possibly no backlogs by the end of the 2025-2026 fiscal year” – Sean Weir
Now the government claims that removing tenant protections will unlock untapped housing supply. We know the outcome – an increase in evictions, particularly for lower income and vulnerable tenants, and an accompanying rise in homelessness. Ultimately, Ontarians will pay the price for unregulated financialized housing.