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This article provides general information about tenant rights in Ontario as of 2026 and is not legal advice. Rent figures are the Government of Ontario's published rent increase guideline. Deposit, entry, maintenance and notice rules are drawn from the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and the Landlord and Tenant Board's own published guidance. Temperature standards are City of Toronto by-law requirements and differ by municipality.
The tenant rights Ontario actually enforces are not principles. They are numbers, and the number is the enforceable part. A landlord cannot raise your rent by a fair amount, they can raise it by 2.1 per cent in 2026. They cannot give you reasonable warning before letting themselves in, they owe you 24 hours in writing. They cannot hold a sensible deposit against damage, because the lawful figure for a damage deposit is zero.
That is unusual, and it is useful. Most areas of law hand you a standard and leave the argument about what it means for a hearing. Residential tenancy law in Ontario mostly hands you an arithmetic problem, so a tenant who knows six numbers can check almost any landlord decision in about a minute.
What follows is those numbers, where each comes from, and which ones changed in 2026. Where the question is enforcement rather than the rule, our guide to the Landlord and Tenant Board in Ontario covers how a file moves. This one is about what the rules say before anyone files anything.
The tenant rights Ontario puts a number on
Six figures cover most of what a landlord can and cannot do to a tenancy that is already running.
- 2.1 per cent is the most rent can rise in 2026 on a rent controlled unit. Ontario has already published 1.9 per cent for 2027.
- 90 days of written notice on Form N1, and 12 months since the last increase, bind every unit under the Act, including those the guideline does not reach.
- Zero is the lawful damage or security deposit here. One month's rent deposit is allowed, it pays the final rental period, and it earns interest yearly.
- 24 hours of written notice, for an entry between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., with a short and closed list of exceptions.
- 21°C is what a Toronto landlord holds from 1 October to 15 May, because the repair standard is a municipal by-law rather than an opinion.
- 12 months from the day an unlawful amount is first charged is how long a tenant has to challenge it at the Board.
2.1%: the ceiling on a 2026 rent increase, and 1.9% waiting behind it
Ontario set the 2026 rent increase guideline at 2.1 per cent, down from 2.5 per cent in 2025. The 2027 figure, 1.9 per cent, is already published.
The guideline is not a policy choice made fresh each year. It tracks the Ontario Consumer Price Index over a June to May window, then stops at 2.5 per cent no matter what the index did. That cap is the part most people miss, and for three years running it was the only thing that mattered: 2023, 2024 and 2025 all landed on 2.5 per cent exactly, which is what a cap looks like when inflation sits above it. 2026 is the first guideline since 2022 that the index set rather than the ceiling.
The guideline tracks the Ontario Consumer Price Index, then stops at 2.5% however high inflation goes. Three years running it stopped there. 2026 is the first figure since 2022 that the cap did not decide.
Source: Government of Ontario, rent increase guideline, retrieved 18 August 2026. 2021 was a legislated rent freeze. The guideline does not apply to a unit first occupied for residential purposes after 15 November 2018, and a landlord approved for an above guideline increase can exceed these figures.
One practical detail decides which number is yours: the guideline that applies is the one for the year the increase takes effect, not the year the notice arrives. A notice handed over in October 2026 for a January 2027 start is a 1.9 per cent notice. Ontario publishes the next year's figure by the end of August, so an autumn notice often crosses into it.
15 November 2018: the date that decides whether 2.1% is your number
Rent control in Ontario has a cut-off date, and it is the sharpest fork in the tenant rights Ontario recognises. The guideline applies only to a unit first occupied for residential purposes on or before 15 November 2018. After that date there is no percentage ceiling at all.
The province is explicit about what falls outside: new buildings, additions to existing buildings, and most new basement apartments occupied for the first time after that date. Community housing, long-term care homes and commercial property sit outside it too, and so does a unit on turnover, since a brand new tenancy can be priced at whatever the market carries.
Say you rent a basement apartment in Ottawa that the owner finished and first rented out in 2021. Your neighbour upstairs, in a house lived in since the 1990s, is looking at 2.1 per cent this year. You are looking at whatever figure the notice names. Same street, same year, two entirely different rules.
Market conditions are no substitute for that missing ceiling, though they occasionally soften it. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation found turnover rents in the Greater Toronto Area fell 2.5 per cent in its 2025 survey, the first such move in years.
90 days and 12 months: the two rules no exemption switches off
Exempt from the guideline is not exempt from the Act. A rent increase on a post-2018 unit still needs 90 days of written notice in the proper form, and still needs 12 months to have passed since the last increase or since the tenancy began.
This is the most common misreading of Ontario rent control. The 2018 change removed one rule from newer units, the percentage, and left the other two untouched. A landlord who raises rent on an exempt unit eight months into a tenancy, or with three weeks' notice, is outside the Act regardless of how modest the amount is. The tenant rights Ontario builds on dates do not soften with the age of the building.
The proper form is the Landlord and Tenant Board's Form N1. Written notice by text or email is not what the Act asks for, and neither is a conversation.
Check a rent increase against the three rules
An Ontario increase has to clear all three at once, and the percentage is only the third of them. Change any field and watch which rule gives way first.
- Twelve months since the last one: metClear. The earliest lawful date was September 1, 2026
- Ninety days of written notice, on Form N1: met108 days between the notice and the new rent
- The 2026 guideline of 2.1%: not metCeiling is $2,246.20. The notice asks $53.80 more
One of the three rules is not met
A tenant can dispute an increase at the Landlord and Tenant Board within 12 months of the day the higher amount was first charged. The rule that fails matters: a notice served too late is a different argument from a percentage set too high.
Guideline figures from the Government of Ontario, retrieved 18 August 2026. This checks the three general rules only, and does not account for an above guideline increase approved by the Board, community housing, care homes or mobile home sites. General information, not legal advice.
Two of those three rules are pure date arithmetic, which is why they are worth checking before anything else. An illegal rent increase in Ontario more often fails on a date than on a decimal point, and a date is far easier to prove.
3% above the guideline, and the one ground with no ceiling on it
A landlord can apply to the Board for an above guideline rent increase on three grounds, and only two of them are capped.
The grounds are a significant rise in municipal taxes and charges, major repairs or renovations that count as capital expenditures, and security services provided by people who are not the landlord's employees. On the second and third, the Board's own guide to the Act sets the limit at 3 per cent above the guideline each year, with a larger justified amount phased across three years. In 2026 that route tops out at 5.1 per cent.
On municipal taxes and charges there is no percentage limit at all, which is why a tenant who has memorised "guideline plus three" can still open a notice that reads higher.
Two deadlines around these applications tightened on 1 July 2026. The landlord now has 7 days from the day the application is issued to serve it, down from 14, and 5 days from service to file the certificate of service. A tenant served late has a genuine procedural point, and how that argument runs is covered in our Landlord and Tenant Board guide.
Zero: the security deposit Ontario has never allowed
Ontario permits exactly one deposit at the start of a tenancy. A rent deposit, capped at one month's rent, or one week's where rent is paid weekly, and it can only ever be applied to the last rental period of the tenancy.
It cannot be held against damage. There is no lawful damage deposit, security deposit or pet deposit in Ontario, whatever the lease says, and money collected for one of those was collected improperly.
The deposit also earns interest annually at a rate equal to the rent increase guideline. In 2026 that is 2.1 per cent, so a $2,200 deposit accrues $46.20 for the year: small enough to forget, and compounding across a long tenancy, which is why unpaid deposit interest is a routine tenant claim.
Other charges carry hard numbers too. If a rent cheque bounces, the landlord can pass on the bank's own NSF charge plus an administration charge capped at $20 per cheque. The Board's rent arrears guideline lists non-refundable key deposits and most administrative charges among those the Act does not permit, and notes NSF amounts cannot be claimed in an N4, one of the eviction notice defects that sinks a landlord's file outright.
On payment method the Board is blunt: post-dated cheques and automatic debit can be suggested, and a tenant cannot be refused a unit or evicted for declining them.
| What is asked for | Lawful in Ontario | The number |
|---|---|---|
| Rent deposit, last rental period | Yes | Maximum one month, or one week if rent is weekly |
| Interest on that deposit | Owed to the tenant | The guideline rate, 2.1% in 2026 |
| Damage or security deposit | No | $0 |
| Pet deposit | No | $0 |
| Non-refundable key deposit | No | $0 |
| NSF administration charge | Yes | $20 per cheque, plus the bank's own charge |
| Post-dated cheques | May be requested, not required | Refusal is not a ground to evict or refuse |
24 hours: the notice of entry an Ontario tenant is owed
For most reasons a landlord may want in, the Act requires written notice 24 hours ahead. The notice names the reason, the day, and a time of entry between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
That covers repairs or work in the unit, an inspection of the state of repair, a viewing by a potential purchaser or by a potential mortgagee or insurer, inspections by professionals such as engineers or architects, and any other reasonable reason written into the tenancy agreement. Showings cluster when a building is being sold, and what a buyer can and cannot do about a sitting tenant is set out in our guide to the legal oversight on a tenanted sale.
A shorter list allows entry with no notice at all: a genuine emergency, the tenant agreeing at the time, cleaning where the tenancy agreement requires it, and showing the unit to a prospective tenant after a notice of termination. The last two are still confined to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and the showing carries an obligation to make reasonable efforts to tell the tenant first.
One line in the Board's interpretation guideline on entry surprises most people: repairs cannot happen without notice even where the tenant asked for the repair, unless the tenant consents at the time of entry. Asking for a leak to be fixed is not standing consent for a Tuesday morning.
Consider a tenant in Hamilton who gets a voicemail at 4 p.m. on Tuesday saying a contractor will come Wednesday morning. That is neither written nor 24 hours, so the Act does not authorise the entry and the tenant can decline it at the door. Where unnecessary or unreasonable entries become a pattern, the Board can treat them as harassment or substantial interference with reasonable enjoyment, which is a claim rather than an inconvenience. Of all the tenant rights Ontario protects, this is the one most often given away by accident, at the door.
21°C: the repair standard is a by-law, not an opinion
The Act makes the landlord responsible for keeping the property in a good state of repair and for complying with health, safety, housing and maintenance standards. It does not set the temperature. The municipality does.
Toronto is the clearest example. Where heating is provided at the owner's expense, a minimum of 21°C applies from 1 October to 15 May. Where the owner provides air conditioning, it runs from 1 June to 30 September to hold the unit at or below 26°C, and from 1 June 2026 RentSafeTO buildings with no cooling but with an indoor amenity space keep that space at or below 26°C across the same window.
Underneath the municipal standard sits the Act's own vital services rule, and the two do not line up. A landlord cannot shut off or interfere with the supply of heat between 1 September and 15 June, or of electricity, fuel, or hot and cold water at any time. So in September, and again in the back half of May, the supply is protected while Toronto's 21 degree floor has not started or has already ended. Supply and standard are separate questions.
Cooling is where tenant rights moved most recently. Since 1 July 2026 a tenant may install and use a window or portable air conditioner where the landlord does not supply cooling, after giving written notice, provided it is installed safely and securely, complies with municipal by-laws, and does not damage the unit or the building. The provision arrives as section 36.1 of the Act, added by Schedule 7 of the Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act, 2023. Where the landlord pays for the electricity, they may raise the rent to cover it, limited to the actual cost or a reasonable estimate.
Two lines a lease cannot enforce against an Ontario tenant
Signing a lease does not make every clause in it binding. Two of the most common ones fail on their own terms.
A provision prohibiting animals is void in Ontario, which makes this province an outlier in Canada. It is not a shield against everything: a tenant can still face an application over noise, damage, a serious allergic reaction affecting another resident, or an animal that is inherently dangerous, and a condominium's declaration operates separately from the lease. What a landlord cannot do is rely on the no-pet line itself.
Minimum income screening fails for a different reason. Under the Human Rights Code a housing provider may ask for income information only alongside credit references, rental history and a credit check, and may consider it only together with all of that. The Ontario Human Rights Commission traces the rule to a 1998 board of inquiry decision in Kearney v. Bramalea, where a rent-to-income cut-off and a $22,000 minimum income threshold were found to breach the Code and were shown to have no predictive value for default. The Divisional Court upheld that finding in 2001. A guarantor can be asked for, but only if every applicant is asked for one.
12 months and $100,000: what happens when a rule is broken
A tenant has 12 months from the day an unlawful amount was first charged to dispute it at the Landlord and Tenant Board. That window covers an illegal rent increase, an unlawful charge, and deposit money held improperly.
Two separate routes exist and they do different things. The Board handles applications between the parties and can order money back. The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing's Rental Housing Enforcement Unit investigates conduct the Act treats as an offence, on 416-585-7214 or 1-888-772-9277. It can stop behaviour, and it does not award a tenant compensation, so the two are often used together rather than instead of each other.
The offence side got heavier on 1 July 2026, when maximum fines under the Act doubled to $100,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a corporation. Those are ceilings a court can reach in a serious case, not a tariff, and they sit alongside anything the Board orders.
The tenant rights Ontario writes down are exercised far less often than the landlord remedies sitting beside them. Tribunals Ontario reports 87,993 applications to the Board in 2024-25, and through its online portal landlords filed 72,836 against 8,267 from tenants, close to nine to one. That gap measures use, not grievance.
One change worth watching is not in force yet. Section 82 currently lets a tenant raise any issue at an arrears hearing, and a pending amendment would add conditions including paying half the arrears claimed beforehand. Tribunals Ontario has pointed at September 2026 for the next tranche. That one narrows a right that exists today, and the detail sits in our guide to eviction notices in Ontario.
When the number is not the whole problem
Plenty of tenancy problems resolve once someone quotes the right figure back. Some do not, and the pattern is fairly consistent.
- The dispute is about money already gone rather than a rule going forward, which turns it into a claim with evidence and a limitation date. A tenancy runs on the Board's prescribed forms rather than correspondence, but our guide to demand letters in Ontario prices each escalation step against doing nothing, and that arithmetic holds here too.
- A repair complaint has become a habitability problem, where the remedy is a rent abatement and the arithmetic is contested.
- An entry problem has become a pattern, so the argument is harassment rather than a single Tuesday.
- The other side has a paralegal or a lawyer and you are reading the form for the first time.
- The tenancy itself is at risk, or the amount is past what a small claims court in Ontario filing would recover.
Whether that threshold has been crossed is its own question, and our guide on whether you need a lawyer in Canada works through it without assuming the answer is yes. The general method, including how to describe a tenancy problem so it reaches the right person, is in our guide to finding a lawyer in Canada, and telling a trustworthy one from the rest covers what to check before you commit. Where the timeline is short, finding a lawyer urgently covers what moves fast, a lawyer referral service in Ontario is one free route to a first half hour, and the Law Society's lawyer lookup confirms a licence in about a minute.
How Olanur helps when a tenancy stops working
We built Olanur because the hardest part of a tenancy problem is rarely the law, it is finding someone who handles this specific thing and is free this week. Across the Ontario housing requests that reach our platform, the recurring pattern is a tenant holding a document with a date on it and no clear sense of whether the date is enforceable.
Olanur matches you with verified landlord and tenant lawyers and licensed paralegals, free, and it is not a referral rotation: you see who fits the issue and decide. If the problem is a notice, a rent increase, a repair, or a deposit that never came back, our landlord and tenant lawyer page is the place to describe it in a few sentences.
On a rent controlled unit the most rent can rise in 2026 is 2.1 per cent, and any increase needs 90 days of written notice on Form N1 with at least 12 months since the last one. If the amount or the timing is wrong, a tenant can dispute it at the Landlord and Tenant Board within 12 months of the day the higher rent was first charged.
No. The only deposit Ontario allows is a rent deposit of no more than one month's rent, or one week's where rent is paid weekly, and it can only be applied to the final rental period. Damage deposits, security deposits, pet deposits and non-refundable key deposits are not permitted regardless of what the lease says.
Twenty-four hours of written notice, naming the reason, the day and a time between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Entry without notice is limited to an emergency, the tenant consenting at the time, cleaning where the agreement requires it, and showing the unit to a prospective tenant after a notice of termination, the last two also between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
A unit first occupied for residential purposes after 15 November 2018 is exempt from the rent increase guideline, which covers new buildings, additions and most new basement apartments from that date. The exemption removes the percentage ceiling only. The 90 day notice requirement and the 12 month gap between increases still apply to that unit.
Yes, with the Board's approval. A landlord can apply for an above guideline rent increase on three grounds: a significant rise in municipal taxes and charges, capital expenditures, or security services. Capital expenditures and security are capped at 3 per cent above the guideline each year, so 5.1 per cent in 2026, and there is no percentage cap at all on the municipal taxes ground.
Since 1 July 2026 a tenant may install and use a window or portable air conditioner where the landlord does not supply cooling, after giving written notice, provided it is installed safely, complies with municipal by-laws and does not damage the unit or the building. Where the landlord pays for electricity, they may charge for the actual cost of running it or a reasonable estimate.
A provision in a tenancy agreement prohibiting animals is void in Ontario, so a landlord cannot rely on the clause itself. A tenant can still face an application over noise, damage to the unit, a serious allergic reaction affecting another resident, or an animal that is inherently dangerous, and a condominium's declaration can impose rules separately from the lease.
Find the date before you find the argument
Almost every tenancy dispute in Ontario has a date underneath it, and the date is easier to settle than the story around it. When the last increase took effect. When the notice was handed over. When the new rent starts. When the money was first charged.
Most tenant rights Ontario gives a tenant turn on one of those four dates. Pull them out of the paperwork first, run them against the three rules, and a surprising share of disagreements resolve without anyone filing anything. If the numbers hold and the problem does not, that is the point at which it stops being arithmetic, and talking to a landlord and tenant lawyer is worth the twenty minutes.
Priya Kapoor
Family, Real Estate & Criminal Law Contributor
Priya focuses on family law, real estate transactions, criminal defence, and civil disputes, guiding Canadians through some of the most consequential legal moments in their lives.
