Bill 60: What's Coming and What Landlords Need to Know

If you own a rental property in Ontario, you already know the hardest part of a dispute is rarely the dispute itself. It is the waiting — the weeks between filing an application and standing in front of an adjudicator, not knowing when a matter will resolve or what it will cost you while it does. For many landlords, that limbo is harder to carry than the money at stake.

Bill 60 was written with that limbo in mind. Ontario has set out to make the Landlord and Tenant Board move faster, and a faster Board is good news for landlords who have done everything correctly. But speed is never free. Bill 60 asks landlords to pay for it in precision: the same reforms that shorten your wait also shorten your margin for error.

What Bill 60 actually is

Bill 60 is the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025. It received Royal Assent on November 27, 2025 and is now Chapter 14 of the Statutes of Ontario, 2025.

It is an omnibus statute — it amends sixteen separate pieces of legislation, most of which has nothing to do with housing. The part landlords need is Schedule 12, which amends the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, the law that governs nearly every residential tenancy in the province and every proceeding before the Landlord and Tenant Board.

One point deserves emphasis before any other. Royal Assent is not the same thing as being in force. A bill can pass, become law on paper, and still sit dormant until the government formally proclaims its sections into effect. Bill 60's housing changes arrive on a schedule rather than all at once, and a few of them carry no date at all. Knowing which rule is live on which day is the entire difference between a notice that holds and a notice an adjudicator sets aside.

The trade at the heart of Bill 60

Almost every meaningful change in Schedule 12 does one of two things. It either speeds the process up, or it raises the standard you are measured against. Often a single change does both. A shorter notice period helps you, but only if the notice itself is flawless. A shorter review window protects you on the day you win and gives you less room to recover on the day you lose.

This is the lens to read Bill 60 through. It is not a gift and it is not a trap. It is a trade. Landlords who treat their paperwork as a formality will experience the new rules as a run of expensive surprises. Landlords who treat the paperwork as the case itself will find the faster Board working firmly in their favour.

Faster answers when rent goes unpaid

The change landlords ask about most is the N4. Today, when a tenant falls into arrears, the N4 — the Notice to End a Tenancy Early for Non-payment of Rent — gives that tenant fourteen days to either pay what is owed or face an application to the Board. Bill 60 cuts that period to seven.

On its face, this halves the opening stage of a non-payment file. The tenant keeps the right to void the notice by paying the arrears in full — that does not change. What changes is the clock: you reach the application stage sooner, and a hearing date sooner.

The seven-day N4 is scheduled to take effect on September 21, 2026, and it is not retroactive. An N4 served before that date runs on the old fourteen-day period. Serving the new short-form notice even a day too early is exactly the kind of error that hands a tenant a clean argument to have the application thrown out. Non-payment files are the most common matter I handle in my landlord and LTB practice, and they are also the least forgiving of small mistakes. The faster timeline only rewards the landlord who serves the right notice on the right day.

The LTB review window now cuts both ways

When the Board issues an order, the party who lost can ask for it to be reviewed — an internal second look before anyone considers an appeal to the Divisional Court. Today a party has thirty days to make that request. Bill 60 shortens it to fifteen.

It is tempting to read this as a straightforward win. A tenant hoping to delay an eviction has half as long to file a review, and that does tighten things up. But a window is a window, and it closes on you just as fast. If the Board makes a real error in your matter — misstates the arrears, overlooks evidence you filed, applies the wrong provision — you also have only fifteen days to act. After that, the order stands, mistakes and all.

This change is scheduled for July 1, 2026. The practical takeaway is plain: read every order the day it lands. Do not set it aside for the weekend. If something looks wrong, the time you have to say so is now measured in days.

Your notice is only as strong as the form it is on

Some of Bill 60's changes sound purely procedural and turn out to be decisive. The requirement to use the Board-approved form is one of them.

From July 1, 2026, a notice to end a tenancy must be given on the form approved by the Landlord and Tenant Board. Not a form that resembles it. Not a template pulled from a property-management blog. Not last year's version sitting on your desktop. The Board's current, approved form.

Adjudicators have always been able to refuse a notice that fails to say what the law requires; Bill 60 makes that standard cleaner and harder to argue around. A defective notice does not simply cost you the hearing — it costs you every week you waited for it. You return to the beginning, on the old clock, while the arrears climb. For a requirement that costs nothing to satisfy, it is one of the most expensive to ignore.

Ending a tenancy for your own use: the new arithmetic

If you need a rental unit back for yourself or a close family member, you serve an N12. Today that step carries a cost — the law requires you to compensate the tenant one month's rent, or to offer another acceptable unit.

Bill 60 introduces an exception. If you give the tenant at least 120 days' notice, and the termination date falls at the end of a rental period or fixed term, the compensation requirement can be waived. In plain terms: more notice, less cost. A landlord able to plan four months ahead no longer pays the same premium as one who needs the unit next month.

This is scheduled for September 21, 2026, and two cautions belong beside it. First, the waiver depends on getting both conditions exactly right — the length of the notice and the termination date — and an N12 that misses either is simply an N12 with compensation still owing. Second, nothing in Bill 60 softens the rules against bad-faith evictions. An N12 must reflect a genuine intention to move in. The consequences for an own-use notice that turns out to be a pretext are unchanged, and they are serious: a tenant who later proves bad faith can be awarded substantial compensation long after they have moved out.

The parts of Bill 60 still being written

Not every part of Bill 60 has a date. Several of the changes that matter most to landlords have passed into law but await proclamation, and some also depend on regulations the province has not yet released. They are coming. They are not here.

Three are worth keeping an eye on. The first is a new condition for tenants who want to raise unrelated issues at a non-payment hearing. Today a tenant facing an arrears application can ask the Board to weigh a maintenance complaint at the same sitting. Bill 60 will require that tenant to first pay a portion of the arrears claimed into the Board before those separate issues can be heard — the stated purpose is to stop unrelated grievances from stalling a straightforward rent matter.

The second is a long-overdue definition of persistent late payment of rent. Landlords have been able to apply to end a tenancy on that ground for years, but without a clear statutory meaning the results swung from one adjudicator to the next. A defined standard should make these applications more predictable to bring and to win.

The third is tighter, more consistent discretion around setting aside the Board's ex parte orders and granting relief from eviction. The goal is fewer surprises and more uniform outcomes — but the detail will live in regulations not yet published.

Because none of these has a proclamation date, the honest answer to "when" is "not yet." Acting on them as though they were current law would be a mistake. Watching for them is simply good practice.

Bill 60 timeline: when each change takes effect

It helps to keep the calendar straight. Here is where Bill 60's housing changes stand today:

• July 1, 2026 — the review request window shrinks to fifteen days, and notices to end a tenancy must be given on the Board-approved form.
• September 21, 2026 — the N4 non-payment notice period drops to seven days, and the own-use compensation waiver for 120-day notices becomes available.
• No date yet — the partial pay-in rule for tenant counter-issues, the statutory definition of persistent late payment, and the revised discretion on set-asides and relief from eviction all remain pending proclamation, and in some cases pending regulations.

Until each section is in force, the current rule still applies. The most common and most costly mistake a landlord can make with Bill 60 is acting on a change before its day has arrived.

How Niagara landlords can prepare for Bill 60

You do not need to memorize section numbers to be ready for Bill 60. You need a habit and a calendar.

The habit is precision. Serve notices on the current Board-approved form. Confirm the notice period that applies on the day you serve, not the one you remember from last year. Calculate termination dates against the rental period rather than the date that happens to suit you. Open Board orders the day they arrive and read them carefully. None of this is new advice — Bill 60 simply raises the price of ignoring it.

The calendar is the rest of it. If you are considering an own-use notice for late 2026 or beyond, the 120-day waiver could save you a month's rent, and that is worth building into your timing now. If a non-payment situation is taking shape, the shift in notice periods around late September means the date you serve genuinely matters.

This is the part of being a landlord that is easy to get wrong on your own and quite straightforward to get right with help. At Stephanie Colangelo Legal Services, I represent landlords across the Niagara Region through the full Landlord and Tenant Board process — preparing notices, filing applications, and appearing at hearings, which are now held by video conference throughout Ontario. If Bill 60 has left you unsure which rule applies to your situation, that is precisely the kind of question a short conversation can settle.

If you would like to talk it through, you are welcome to request a free quarter-hour consultation or browse the landlord and tenant questions in my FAQ. Bill 60 will reward the landlords who prepare. There is still time to be one of them.

This article is general information about Ontario law as of its publication date. It is not legal advice. Bill 60's provisions come into force on the dates set by the Government of Ontario and may be shaped by regulations not yet released. For guidance on your specific situation, please consult a licensed paralegal or lawyer.