With the passage of Bill 60 in Ontario, there has been an intense focus on the Residential Tenancy Act (RTA) aspects of this bill. Rental groups protested this Bill right up to the last minute. The government passed it with no public consultation and even backed down on a portion that related to month-to-month leases (security of tenure). On November 24 2025, the bill passed the majority Conservative legislature with a 71 – 43 vote. The bill itself is on the Ontario Government website, and I encourage you to go see it for yourself1. Don’t let anyone tell you what it says or means2. But, of peak interest to me has been the activity and messaging surrounding these changes.
ACORN was leading this fight of dueling rhetoric. The crux of ACORN’s argument against Bill 60 is the vague statement that “It will lead to more evictions which will lead to more homelessness.” On the surface this is nonsensical: If the moribund Landlord and Tenant Board is made to do their jobs correctly (i.e. reduce the backlogs to a reasonable service standard for all matters), then yes, this will, on average, mean more evictions. I mean, that’s the point of the vast majority of hearings: evict or don’t evict. And, by the nature of an eviction, the person is without that home they lived in. They may be homeless or they may have already found a place. Do they all stay homeless and go to encampments? No. Some will be housed immediately. If any of you have faced eviction3, this can be a difficult consequence of prior actions; especially when children are involved. So, in a sense, ACORN’s misgivings are boiled down to no nuance and a nonsense statement that essentially means “Keep a governmental body broken so people (no matter how bad) might never have to face consequences.” Also, remember the backlogs hurt tenants the most, given those matters are more complex they take the longest to get to hearings. It’s a self-own for ACORN.
There could be a ton of subtext gained from this too, from the insinuation that private individuals should foot the cost for bad tenants (and not doing it means more taxpayer cost in shelters). There is a zero-sum implication in this rhetoric, assuming that there are only two ways to face this housing challenge. It’s impossible to know, but it may be true that ACORN’s ilk also perceive the nonpayment of rent as no crime, no foul, no biggie, no problem. Stick around long enough and the conversation might become about ending Capitalism and eschewing science to be one with nature or something like that. Hey, that’s okay. But Hamilton ACORN Co-chair Marc Davignon was blowing a literal death whistle in the Ontario legislature. Was this just for noise? Perhaps a death threat directed at Doug Ford? Some reports have said these folks were throwing things at MPPs, but I can’t confirm that. What I can confirm, is that Davignon was a previous tenant and paid his rent persistently late. In his case, he found a new place to live before the hearing (that might have evicted him). If it weren’t for Marc having to pay the landlord’s filing fee, this order, and his history, would have gone away. But, is this why Marc hates any change that could favour a landlord?
Politicians have gotten into the fray with their own sort of misinformation. Perhaps it’s to stoke fears or build political capital, but Chiara Padovani, a City Councillor, related a story of a tenant who would have to pay “an extra $150 (50% of rent owed)” to “defend herself at the LTB.” This is absolutely false. Bill 60 will require a tenant to pay 50% of rent owed to bring new issues4 to the table. Padovani’s example tenant would not be restricted from “defending herself.” Padovani describes a process where one needs “to pay what the landlord claims you owe without it even proven.” is also another insanely false statement. There is no such process. In the sense of the LTB, the landlord cannot prove a negative. The landlord has a chance claim arrears, yes. The tenant then has a chance then to establish proof they paid the rent. Too many are conflating “new issues” with “no defense.” Given this is early with the legislation, the process that limits the bringing of new issues has not been established at the LTB, though without new issues to raise, Padovani’s tenant would not have had pay that $150. Padovani also, in the same press conference, called Bill 60 an “outrageous attack on tenants.” I can understand she feels this way given how wrong she is. Someone should have told her before the press conference started.
There is the direct message of Bill 60 “driving up rents,” as Councillor Gord Perks and others have said. The reality is that, by this logic, again, a correctly functioning LTB would evict more, and drive up rents. But, none of them have any proof of this, and if we’re being intellectually honest, the rental market is going to respond to a ton of factors, none of those in Bill 60 will be seen for years. But, in the now, this rhetoric is just more scare mongering. Jennifer French, my Oshawa MPP stood up to read missives from people that without French mentioning the Bill, could have been about any topic.
And the worst of these seems to be Kristyn Wong-Tam who has routinely called this an “attack on renters,” and used overblown language to give her ideas simplicity and outsized importance. On the Stop Bill 60 site, Wong-Tam says “Late by a day? Evicted. That’s not housing policy — that’s cruelty.” – which is incorrect. Now, even if you don’t focus on the fact that Bill 60 changes nothing about the reasons people are evicted, Bill 60 also changes nothing about how a tenant could pay their rent arrears and avoid eviction. They could even pay those arrears very late into the many months long eviction process to nullify it. Mischaracterizing this slow-as-molasses process as easy and swift is dishonest; making it seem like Bill 60 is involved is even more so – but it’s been the hallmark of this larger resistance. And on another day, Wong-Tam said publicly that backlogs are bad. They can’t have it both ways: reduce LTB backlogs and face “more” evictions, or keep the tribunal broken and backlogged. Which is it?
I won’t even get into some other outlets that are just so far off that saying Bill 60 is a “state response to tenant organizing.” It’s just too outlandish to merit attention. Or this irresponsible story from BlogTO that suggests Bill 60 would have caused an eviction for one penny in arrears (it doesn’t change anything related to ex parte evictions). The fear-mongering is at an all-time high in some corners of this fight.
On the opposite side, small landlords consider this a positive step towards making the LTB more efficient and, finally, having the worst tenants (who scoff at rent) start to realize they can’t continue doing this. Some are using rhetoric in a similar way, like @josephbourne who says the disrupters at parliament were “protesting for the right to live in people’s homes for free.” This is just not the case. Tenant groups may want to abolish the entire rental market, but I don’t see any evidence that they want renters to live for free. His assertion that Bill 60 will lead to less people on the street is just as nonsensical as ACORN’s. His assertion is no more than a prediction based on what he knows of economics.
It’s really no wonder people have come to fear these changes when no one offers clear discourse. Rents are too damn high too. I think everyone recognizes that. Large corporate interests are building huge profits off the backs of renters. There is no limit to the hate, but much of this hate is directed in the wrong place. Large swaths of landlords are small, one or two property owners that don’t deserve this ire. That tenant groups can’t tell the difference, or even outright denies their existence, is another story for another day. You don’t have to go far to find out where I stand on this issue.
I have think that ACORN would be standing behind me blowing a death whistle as the tenant savored the sight of my house burning, owing $26,650.00 in unpaid rent by then. Almost none of that recoverable at a time when my family was growing. What I can say is that the new rules in Bill 60 may have evicted this tenant in time to save our community the danger of a house fire. If you’re curious to learn more, this entire story is chronicled in my book From Rent to Ruin.