This bill amends Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act and the Technical Standards and Safety Act to impose a package of tenant-focused obligations and transparency measures on owners of rental buildings. It requires building-level temperature controls in common areas during the warm season, new reporting and public-portal disclosure of maintenance activity, and mandatory monitoring or staffing measures in larger complexes.
The bill also tightens remedies for prolonged outages of vital services and elevators and bans certain parking fees.
Enforcement is split between municipalities (inspectors and work orders for temperature compliance), the Landlord and Tenant Board (abatements and remedial orders), and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (elevator outage reporting). The changes create measurable compliance thresholds and penalties, plus staged commencement dates for implementation.
For professionals — landlords, property managers, municipal officials, building services contractors and compliance officers — the bill replaces discretion with discrete operational duties and public reporting requirements that will affect capital planning, vendor contracting and tenant relations.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires landlords to keep common-area indoor temperatures at or below a set level during a defined warm-season window and empowers municipalities to inspect and issue work orders; it mandates digital visitor parking registration, building surveillance and security staff in larger complexes; it creates annual public maintenance-data uploads; and it requires elevator remote monitoring and outage reporting to regulators.
Who It Affects
Owners and operators of residential complexes (with scaled duties for very large buildings), property managers, contractors who perform maintenance and elevator service, municipal inspection regimes and the Landlord and Tenant Board. Tenants gain new complaint and remedy channels; the Technical Standards and Safety Authority gains reporting data on elevator outages.
Why It Matters
The bill converts service-quality expectations into enforceable standards with numerical thresholds and public data disclosure. That shifts risk from opaque complaint handling toward administrative oversight, creates new compliance costs and public-facing metrics, and gives tenants clearer, faster remedies for chronic service failures.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill imposes three linked categories of obligations: building environment and safety standards, transparency and reporting, and stricter outage remedies. For environment and safety, landlords must control indoor temperatures in common areas during the warm-season window and, for larger buildings, install digital visitor-parking registration, building-wide video surveillance and hire on-site security personnel.
Municipalities handle complaints about the temperature rule, send inspectors, and can issue work orders that set timelines and required corrective actions. The Landlord and Tenant Board can enforce municipal work orders by ordering rent abatements or requiring the landlord to do the work.
On transparency and reporting, landlords of mid-size and larger residential complexes must compile annual digital statistics about maintenance requests and outcomes and upload them to a ministerial online portal. The portal is also required to aggregate municipal registration program data.
The Board may consider portal information as part of its record in disputes. The bill also bans landlords from charging tenants fees for visitor parking and requires landlords to provide tenants with a paper guide to building amenities and an annual paper newsletter describing changes.For elevators, the Technical Standards and Safety Act changes require owners to use remote electronic monitoring that registers operational availability and to submit outage reports to the regulator when an elevator is down past a set period; tenants may also submit outage reports.
The regulator will publish key outage data. The Residential Tenancies Act additions create specific rent abatements when vital services or elevators are withheld repeatedly or for prolonged periods.
The bill sets deadlines for replacing broken surveillance components and for landlords to meet other remedial steps, and it stages different provisions to come into force at varying intervals after Royal Assent.Operationally, landlords will need to integrate monitoring and reporting into their property-management workflows, contractually confirm maintenance-response times with vendors, and prepare for municipal inspections and public disclosure of maintenance performance. Municipalities and the TSSA will need to absorb complaint handling, inspection and data-publication duties.
The result is a coordinated regulatory regime: municipal enforcement for some building standards, the Board for tenant remedies, and the TSSA for elevator safety and transparency.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill caps common-area indoor temperature at 26°C during the warm-season window (May 15–September 15) and makes the landlord legally responsible for compliance.
Municipal inspectors can issue work orders for temperature breaches; the Landlord and Tenant Board may order a rent abatement of 1% per day from the end of the work-order compliance period until the Board’s order or require the landlord to carry out the work.
The Board must order a 20% rent abatement if a vital service is withheld for more than 24 hours over a three-month period (with exclusions for events beyond the landlord’s control); elevator outages that total more than 48 hours over three months trigger a Board-ordered 5% abatement.
Landlords of complexes with 100 or more rental units must install digital visitor-parking registration systems, video surveillance covering all common areas, and employ a security guard for each qualifying building; surveillance components must be repaired within seven days after written notice.
Every landlord of a residential complex with at least 10 rental units or three or more storeys must annually (by March 1) upload digital statistics about maintenance requests and resolutions to a Minister-run portal; if fewer than 90% of requests were resolved, the landlord cannot apply for an above-guideline rent increase.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Common-area temperature duty, municipal inspections, parking registration and tenant guides
These provisions place primary enforcement for the temperature rule with local municipalities: tenants complain to the municipality, inspectors investigate and, if noncompliance is found, issue work orders that specify required work and a compliance window. Landlords must also install a digital visitor-parking registration system in complexes reaching the large-building threshold and provide tenants a paper guide at move-in plus an annual paper newsletter. Practically, property managers must integrate building HVAC monitoring, respond to municipal inspection protocols and retain records showing compliance with work orders.
Stricter abatements for withheld vital services and enforcement when work orders are breached
The bill creates a 20% rent-abatement remedy (on tenant application) when a vital service is withheld for more than 24 hours within a three-month window, excluding time beyond a landlord’s control. Separately, when a municipal work order for temperature compliance is breached, the Board may impose a daily abatement of 1% from the work-order deadline until the Board’s ruling or require the landlord to perform the work. These mechanisms convert service failures into quantified financial pressure tied to compliance timelines.
Mandatory video surveillance and security staff in very large buildings
For buildings meeting the very-large threshold, the bill mandates video surveillance covering interior and exterior common areas and requires landlords to post notice, provide contact information for access requests, and disclose surveillance use to prospective tenants. Landlords cannot seek above-guideline rent increases on the grounds of installing surveillance. The bill also requires hiring or engaging a security guard per qualifying building with defined duties (patrol and non-emergency complaint response), and requires repair of damaged surveillance components within seven days after written notice.
Prohibitions on charging for visitor parking and elimination of certain Board fees
The bill explicitly forbids landlords or their agents from charging tenants any fee to use visitor parking, and it removes Board fees for applications under the specified section (s.57). This reduces a previously common source of landlord revenue and lowers procedural costs for tenants seeking certain remedies.
Annual maintenance-data portal, repair-performance thresholds and evidentiary use in proceedings
Landlords of complexes meeting the mid-size threshold must compile annual digital statistics on maintenance requests (nature, vendor, request and resolution dates), upload pictures as evidence, and permit tenant comments. The minister must provide an online portal and ingest municipal registration data. If a landlord resolves less than 90% of requests as defined, they lose the right to apply for an above-guideline rent increase. The Board may treat portal content as part of the record in disputes, giving public maintenance metrics legal weight.
Elevator monitoring and outage reporting to the regulator
Elevator owners must use remote electronic monitoring that logs operating availability and must report to the Technical Standards and Safety Authority when an elevator serving rental units is out of service for more than a specified threshold; owners must file follow-up reports when service is restored. Tenants may also report outages. The regulator will publish key outage and maintenance-interval data, creating a public audit trail of elevator reliability and contractor response times.
Staged implementation and delayed commencement for certain provisions
Most provisions come into force on Royal Assent, but several duties have delayed start dates to give industry time to comply: certain landlord obligations (notably parts of the Residential Tenancies Act amendments) and elevator-monitoring rules are staged to come into force 12 months to three years after Royal Assent. Compliance planning should account for these staggered windows when budgeting and contracting.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Tenants across rental housing: gain clearer numerical remedies for sustained service failures, formal complaint channels to municipalities and the Board, public maintenance performance data and protections against parking fees.
- Tenants with mobility constraints: receive stronger protections through required elevator monitoring, mandatory outage reporting to the regulator and a formal abatement remedy for prolonged outages.
- Tenant advocates and enforcement bodies: obtain standardized, publishable maintenance statistics and clearer evidence streams in disputes, enabling targeted enforcement and public accountability.
Who Bears the Cost
- Large-property owners and managers (100+ units): must install digital parking systems, video surveillance across common areas, employ security personnel, and repair surveillance components quickly, creating capital and recurring payroll or vendor costs.
- Mid-size landlords (10+ units or 3+ storeys): must compile and upload annual maintenance statistics and manage portal interactions, adding administrative work and potential reputational risk from public data.
- Municipalities and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority: required to receive complaints, appoint inspectors, investigate temperature compliance and publish elevator outage data — duties that imply staffing, training and IT or data-management costs.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill pits tenant-centered safety, transparency and enforceability against landlord operational cost and privacy concerns: it hardens service standards and public reporting to protect tenants, but doing so imposes capital, staffing and data-management burdens on landlords and requires municipal and provincial agencies to scale enforcement — a trade-off between immediate tenant protections and longer-term financial and administrative pressures on the housing ecosystem.
The bill creates enforceable metrics and public reporting, but several implementation questions and trade-offs are unresolved. First, privacy and data-governance rules for the mandatory surveillance systems are deferred to regulations; how regulators balance tenant safety, access to footage, retention periods and limits on tenant copying remains unspecified.
Those regulatory choices will materially affect compliance costs and legal exposure for landlords.
Second, the bill relies heavily on municipal capacity and the Board to enforce technical standards. Municipalities must appoint inspectors and handle complaints; where municipalities lack resources, enforcement may be uneven.
Likewise, Board remedies (abatements and orders) depend on tenants applying and the Board’s processing capacity. The public maintenance portal creates reputational incentives to prioritize fast closes of tickets; that could either improve responsiveness or encourage superficial “resolutions” (photos showing temporary fixes) that do not address root causes.
Finally, numeric thresholds (10 units, 100 units, specific hourly cut-offs, percentage abatements, the 90% resolution metric) simplify administration but are blunt instruments. They create cliffs where compliance and costs jump at a fixed threshold, potentially distorting ownership structures or incentivizing unit-splitting or amalgamation strategies to avoid duties.
The rent-increase restrictions tied to the portal and surveillance installation reduce the straightforward ability of owners to recover costs through above-guideline increases, but landlords may nonetheless seek other cost-recovery mechanisms that shift burdens to tenants indirectly.
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