At a glance

• The Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 (Bill 60) received Royal Assent on November 27, 2025.
• Royal Assent and "in force" are not the same thing. The RTA-amending sections of Bill 60 require a separate Cabinet proclamation before they take legal effect, and that proclamation has not been issued.
• Until proclamation, the current rules apply. N4 notices for non-payment of rent require 14 days. Appeals of LTB orders must be filed within 30 days. The 50% arrears rule is not in effect. The new N12 compensation rules are not in effect.
• The Ontario Human Rights Commission has filed formal submissions opposing several of the proposed changes, including the 50% arrears rule. The regulations are still being shaped.
• Tribunals Ontario says it is preparing forms, IT systems, and adjudicator training in coordination with the government. No proclamation date has been announced.
• For Ontario landlords: do not file paperwork under the pending timelines. Continue using current rules. Watch for proclamation notices through Tribunals Ontario.
  
  

The bottom line: still not in force

A lot of confusion is circulating about Bill 60. Some property managers and even some legal-adjacent advisors are treating the 7-day N4 and the 50% arrears rule as if they've already taken effect. They haven't.

New Law but Old Rules

Bill 60 passed Ontario's Legislature and received Royal Assent on November 27, 2025. That's a significant milestone and the way the law is set up, it means that Cabinet now has the authority to bring the law into effect when they think everything is ready. But the RTA-amending sections of the bill require a separate step, called a proclamation, before they create binding legal obligations on landlords and tenants. So think, the law is passed, but its not in effect until the government says.  

That proclamation has not happened. As of the writing of this piece (June 2026), Tribunals Ontario has publicly confirmed it is "preparing for implementation", including new forms, IT system updates, adjudicator training and who knows what else.  But, and this is important, no proclamation date has been announced.

In the meantime, the existing residential tenancy rules continue to apply. A landlord filing an eviction notice today under Bill 60's proposed shorter timeline would be filing paperwork that has no current legal force.

What Bill 60 actually does (when proclaimed)

There are four pretty significant changes to the Residential Tenancies Act sit waiting for this proclamation. Each one was intended to address a specific complaint that had built up over the past while to do with Ontario's tenancy dispute process.

• Shorter N4 timeline for unpaid rent. Today, when a tenant misses rent, a landlord can serve an N4 Notice of Termination giving the tenant 14 days to pay or vacate. Under Bill 60, the period shortens to 7 days. That cuts the time a landlord must wait before filing an L1 application with the LTB roughly in half.

• Shorter window to request an LTB order review.  Today, a party (typically a tenant) has 30 days to apply for a review or appeal of an LTB order. Bill 60 shortens that to 15 days. The intent is to compress the post-decision period so that orders can be enforced sooner where there's no genuine legal basis for a review.
• Changed compensation rules for N12 personal-use evictions. Today, a landlord serving an N12 (notice to terminate because the landlord, a family member, or a purchaser intends to occupy the unit) must pay the tenant one month's rent in compensation. Bill 60 carves out an exception: if the landlord provides at least 120 days of notice, the compensation requirement is removed. The intent is to encourage longer-notice N12 evictions and reduce financial friction for landlords providing legitimate advance notice.
• The 50% arrears rule on maintenance defences. Today, a tenant at a rent arrears hearing can raise maintenance issues as a defence and effectively delay the proceeding while the tribunal investigates. Bill 60 changes that: a tenant wishing to raise new maintenance issues must first pay 50% of the alleged arrears into the LTB's trust account before those issues will be heard. The intent is to deter tactical use of maintenance defences to delay non-payment evictions.

A handful of other related changes also arrive in the same package.

• Fixed-term leases no longer automatically convert to month-to-month tenancies on expiry, which gives landlords more flexibility to renegotiate or end leases.
• Landlords filing L2 applications must now disclose every N12 or N13 served on any property in the previous two years, intended to identify "serial evictors." Failure to disclose can result in dismissal as bad faith.

What the rules actually are today

Until proclamation, here is what's actually true:

• N4 notice period:  14 days for non-payment of rent.
• LTB order review window: 30 days.
• N12 compensation: one month's rent, regardless of notice length.
• Maintenance defences at rent arrears hearings: no 50% pre-payment requirement.
• Fixed-term leases: automatically convert to month-to-month on expiry.
• N12/N13 disclosure: no mandatory two-year disclosure on L2 applications.

If you file paperwork under the pending Bill 60 timelines, the LTB will reject it or treat it as defective. The cost of getting this wrong is real, including delayed proceedings, requests for procedural reviews, and additional filing fees.

To Watch: The OHRC pushback

Even when the Province figures out new paperwork and finishes training adjudicators,  when the proclamation comes, it may not be as advertised.  The good people at the Ontario Human Rights Commission have filed formal submissions opposing several of Bill 60's proposed changes.

The OHRC's biggest concern is the 50% arrears rule. The Commission argues that conditioning the right to raise new issues on payment of half the alleged arrears effectively blocks tenants from raising Code-protected defences - think racial or sexual discrimination, harassment, failure to accommodate. Their rational is that many tenants identify these issues only when they get legal advice, often shortly before or at the hearing itself. They feel that requiring half the arrears to be paid first would deny tenants procedural justice on these  Code-related claims.  This, I suppose, presumes that many tenants are not aware of the fact that their landlord is a harassing bigot until they are so advised.

The OHRC has also filed against the shorter N4 period, the shorter review window, and the reduced N12 compensation. Its consistent recommendation is for the government to reconsider these amendments and adopt what it calls a "human rights-based approach" to LTB process reform. 

This matters for landlords too, even though the OHRC's position is protective of tenants. The regulatory package that ultimately gets proclaimed may carve out exceptions to address the OHRC's concerns. The 50% arrears rule, for example, could be implemented with explicit exemptions for Code-related defences. That would soften its practical impact relative to the version sitting on the table today.

The point is that what arrives at proclamation may not look exactly like what passed in November 2025.

Why the delay

A bill receives Royal Assent at the end of the legislative process. So the King says ok but there is still a lot of work to do.   Many provisions, especially those creating new operations - how is this actually going to work day to day? -  require a bunch of regulatory and administrative work before they take effect.

In Bill 60's case, that includes:

• New LTB forms (N4 with the shorter timeline, revised L1, disclosure forms for serial-evictor tracking).
• All manner of IT system changes at Tribunals Ontario to accept the new forms and process applications under the revised timelines.  Hopefully not done by the team at ArriveCAN.
• Of course there needs to be thorough Adjudicator training on the new procedural rules (including how to handle that 50% arrears rule and any changes that may be coming).
• Then deciding on what are the final regulations setting out the factors adjudicators must consider when postponing or setting aside eviction orders, which, of course, the government has indicated will go through additional consultation.

To be fair, this work does need to get done - and it needs to be done right.   Tribunals Ontario has publicly stated it is preparing for implementation "in coordination with the Government of Ontario," but has not announced a target date. From what I have read, people in the know generally expect proclamation no earlier than late 2026 or early 2027, though there is no formal guidance.

Terry Riddoch

If you would like to talk through how any of this applies to a building you own or one you are considering, I am always happy to walk through the numbers.

Terry Riddoch
Real Estate Broker -- Multifamily and Investment Properties, Ontario

Phone: 519 591 1725
Email: [email protected]
Web: terryriddoch.ca

Sources:   Government of Ontario (Bill 60 legislative record), Ontario Human Rights Commission submissions on Bill 60, Tribunals Ontario, Globe and Mail, CBC News.