STATUS

Within seven days of being issued on Feb. 21, 2024, the “automatic eviction” petition received over 25,000 signatures. 

As of this writing, the petition has been signed by 28,300. About 2,000 are from other parts of Canada. About 1,000 are from other countries, predominantly USA.

The right to evict a tenant who has not paid their rent and to repossess a rental property is clearly one of the most pressing top-of-mind issues for grassroots small-to-medium residential rental property owners in Ontario. 

As of about 7:00 AM on March 15, 2024, only two entities stepped up to find out about the petition’s grievance.

SOLUTION

The solution is simple, based on well-established laws of the land, and will solve a number of overarching housing issues including particularly providing housing providers with the confidence in the justice system to once again rent out their second suites and invest in rental condos and houses. 

Ontario is the only province that had a net loss of rental housing, losing over 6,500 rental units in 2023 alone.

GOVERNMENT (THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE)

The petition and a cover letter were sent to:

• Office of the Premier, Doug Ford – no response
• Attorney General of Ontario – no response
• All 124 Members of Provincial Parliament (MPP) including Doug Ford’s MPP email address – one quasi-response
• Assistant for MPP Vic Fedeli (Nipissing, PC Party), replied but did not address the issue in the petition

·    MPP Billy Pang (Markham-Unionville, PC Party) is hosting a landlord and tenant round table March 24, 2024 but only invited Markham, ON constituents. I asked to represent the 1,034 (so far) Markham signatories who signed the petition but did not receive a reply

·    3 MPPs unsubscribed from the petition list, clearly indicating no interest in your and especially their constituents', grievance: 

·    MPP Mike Harris – Kitchener-Conestoga – PC Party

·    MPP Stephen Crawford – Oakville – PC Party

·    MPP Chris Glover – Spadina—Fort York – NDP Party

• All MPPs received the petition in their email boxes because auto-replies were received from all of them
• Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario donation contribution office – no response
• Ontario Ombudsman – Paul Dube – no response
• Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities of Canada - Sean Fraser – no response
• Tribunal Watch – Kathy Laird – no response
• National Financialization Council

Replied that, “The review panel is only able to consider information that was presented … between April 26 – August 31, 2023 … [and] … The panel is currently in the final stages of preparing its report to the Minister [and] … we will forward this information to the panel for informational purposes.”

MEDIA

• The Star (Toronto newspaper) – Martin Regg Cohn – no response
• News 1010 - Jerry Agar – no response
• TVO The Agenda - Steve Paikin – no response
• CTV – Abby O’Brien – no response
• CBC News – Michael Smee – sent television team for interview (2024 03 14) – 45 minutes. Should air the week of 2024 03 18 as part of a segment on professional tenants

ORGANIZED HOUSING PROVIDER ASSOCIATIONS

• Only one entity from organized housing provider associations stepped up to discuss the petition:

·    Ravi Sohal, a local realtor in Brampton, heading the battle against the City of Brampton’s licensing scheme, conducted a thoughtful and insightful 50-minute podcast: https://youtu.be/MitcZr41xK4 

• Three housing provider associations informed me that they sent out the petition to their members about a week after the petition went out:

·    Durham Landlords Association

·    Quinte Region Landlords Association

·    Peterborough Landlords Association

• The province-wide Federation of Rental-Providers of Ontario (FRPO) and Small Ownership Landlords Ontario (SOLO), both with extensive media and government contacts, did not contact me to support the petition. 

·    SOLO rebuked the petition effort in one communique with a petition signer

·    Another petition signer suggested to SOLO that a private member's Bill asking for automatic eviction for non-payment of rent be submitted if an MPP supports it. SOLO rejected that suggestion

·    Six days after your auto-evict petition was launched, SOLO presented its own auto-evict-like proposal to Nina Tangri, Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade on Feb. 27/24, who is responsible for government red tape among many things. In a follow-up meeting March 14, 2024 (yesterday), SOLO met with "Mr “Red tape reduction,” [sic] Paul Szachlewicz, Director of Policy & Stakeholder Relations,” in a “… very cordial and professional MS Teams online meeting …” 

PETITION WEBSITE COMPANY

Change.org, the website that manages the petition process, reached out unsolicited and offered to find media contacts that might be interested in the story. They came back with one contact: Abby O'Brien from CTV on March 5th. She said she would reach out but no contact to date.

LAW FIRMS

I requested the names of any law firms that might be appropriate for this kind of class action. Only one petitioner replied, mentioning the name of a lawyer who had filed a judicial review in the divisional court as well as the name of the law firm that SOLO previously used in its failed, few-million-dollar class action against the province.

I reached out twice to three top-class law firms that specialize in constitutional law. As of this writing, none replied:

·    Bennett Jones LLP

·    Goldblatt Partners LLP

·    Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein

CANADA REVENUE AGENCY (CRA)

I submitted a suggestion through the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) anonymous tips website (CRA doesn’t allow contact through email) 

• CRA should obtain names of all tenant defendants (publicly available info) with orders against them for non-payment of rent about 37,000 tenant sin 2023
• Compare the LTB Order date with each tenant’s personal tax return to determine whether:
• Tenant unlawfully claimed the rent expense, when they didn’t pay the rent
• Tenant declared extended use of rental property as a taxable benefit
• Determine if “cash for keys” payments paid to tenant was reported as additional (taxable) income on their personal tax returns 

TENANT ACTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES

Tenant groups are organizing and are being heard by politicians and the media.

ACORN, a very active tenant advocacy group with what I would argue are extreme views and proposed solutions, launched multiple marches and rallies in at least eight cities across Ontario in the past few weeks to demand vacancy control, an end to Above Guideline Increases (AGI), an end to “renovictions” and a host of other demands.

Tenants may win concessions and additional “rights” from populist politicians in the short term, but these collective actions will wipe out a large number of small-to-medium housing providers and compel many second suite (generally, the most affordable type of rental unit) operators to withdraw their rental units. This will further drastically reduce Ontario’s rental housing inventory. Ontario already has a net loss of 6,500 rental units in 2023 alone.

If demand is intolerable today, the demand when tens of thousands of additional individual rental units disappear will be catastrophic. To compound the catastrophe, where will Ontario house the estimated 200,000 desperately-needed skilled immigrants who are coming to this province each year for the next three years? 

Robert Kennedy famously said, “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.” By extension then, the large, silent and complacent majority of housing providers and their divided and largely uncoordinated representative organizations deserve the kind of empowered tenant they get. 

There will be no peace without justice.

Chris.