For the first time, it was mentioned to me yesterday (2024 04 02) that Ontario had an automated five-day eviction process for uncontested non-payment of rent under the Mike Harris (PC party) administration.
His administration introduced The Tenant Protection Act, 1997, which was signed into law in early 1998.
The fast-track eviction procedure comprised a tenant being given five days from the time a housing provider informed a tenant about an eviction application for non-payment of rent to file a written dispute. If the tenant didn’t meet the deadline, the housing provider’s claim was deemed to be uncontested and the eviction was granted.
This legislation was revoked in January, 2007 by Dalton McGuinty's Liberal party and replaced with the brutal, anti-landlord legislation contained in the Residential Tenancies Act, which also established the equally anti-landlord Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).
The auto-evict legislation obviously already exists and could be used as the foundation for quickly re-introducing the auto-evict process that almost 36,000 signers of the auto-evict petition are demanding.
It's even "better" than the B.C. legislation because this Ontario legislation didn't involve an adjudicator. Improving LTB delay timelines will NOT address or resolve the petition's issue. Having more adjudicators will only lead to more Settlement Orders that offer extended repayment terms that non-rent-paying tenants won’t or can’t honour as well as further extensions, invalid arguments about withholding payment for maintenance issues, and other delaying tactics.
The real issue is that the government, through the LTB, has systematically removed a housing provider’s right of repossession of a rental property when the government’s tenancy agreement has been breached by the tenant not paying their rent in full when due. Repossession of property (or any good or service) is guaranteed under contract law and administered by common law.
There is no legislation that gives a tenant the right to not pay rent. Therefore, no tenant rights would be modified or removed by the implementing the petition's demand.
"Fees for Keys" extortion would end instantly, rent-paying tenants and even marginalized high-risk tenants would have a vastly easier time qualifying for a rental property (because housing providers would know they would get their property returned to them in 30 days for non-payment of rent), and thousands of the most affordable types of rental properties (e.g. second suites) would enter the market near-immediately (6 to 12 months).
Where's the political leadership or is it a matter of absent courage?
What is it about the petition that government has such a hard time understanding or accepting?
Chris Seepe
cseepe@aztechrealty.com