Ford tilts the table in favour of landlords

Here is a neat trick most governments try to pull off at one point or another. It’s not specific to any particular political stripe — it’s probably something they all learn in government school, course title Spin 101.

Say you have a piece of legislation you want to enact. It helps one particular group and hurts others. So what you do is name the legislation so it sounds like something that will help the people it actually hurts. For example, an Act to Improve Student Learning Outcomes might actually include provisions to increase class sizes and ultimately hurt student learning. See how we did that?

Now here is a real life example, and it is not remotely funny. This week the Doug Ford government will push through Bill 184, which has the noble sounding title “Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act.” It will do nothing of the sort.

Here is what the government has in mind, and what it will get since it has such a strong majority mandate there’s no way to stop it. Currently, when a landlord wants to recover rent arrears or wants to see a tenant evicted, it has to go through the Landlord Tenant Board, which arbitrates the process.

That will change under the laughably-named “Protecting Tenants” act. It will allow landlords to go around the Landlord Tenant Board and offer repayment plans directly to tenants who owe back rent. If the tenant agrees to the terms, and for whatever reason falls behind on the repayment, even a single payment, the landlord can then apply directly to the sheriff to evict the tenant. If the order is approved the landlord can remove the tenant with no notice.

Tenants will still have the right to appeal to the Landlord Tenant Board, but many, if not most, will not know that. Ethical landlords will inform them, but we know from experience there are many unethical landlords who won’t. Tenants whose first language is not English will be at a distinct disadvantage, especially where they don’t know their rights. Vulnerable tenants who previously had the regulatory protection of the Landlord Tenant Board will have nothing between them and their landlords, who in many cases will be happy to see them evicted so they can take advantage of the hypercompetitive rental market and increase rents.

Why? Why erode protections for renters, many of whom have already been badly hurt by the pandemic? Why give such an advantage to landlords, who already hold he balance of power in the relationship with tenants?

The government has its stock answers. Efficiencies. Reducing red tape. But these efficiencies only benefit one side in the relationship.

One factor often cited by landlords and their government lobbyists is that the Landlord Tenant Board is notoriously slow. Tenant advocates will agree this is true. But it’s slow because it has been starved of investment and support from the government. It’s a classic case of setting up a system to fail, and then using that inevitable failure to justify a different system that is less equitable to the most vulnerable people.

The purpose here is not to brand all landlords as uncaring and unscrupulous. No doubt the majority are fair minded and just want to run a profitable business that benefits them and their tenants. But that’s not good enough. If we have learned anything from this pandemic, it is that we need strong, equitable regulations to ensure fairness, in particular for the most vulnerable citizens. We have not had that in long-term care, and look what happened because of it. There is absolutely no justification for making oversight of landlord/tenant relations less equitable, especially when the weaker of the two parties comes out on the losing end, as will be the case with Bill 184.