Council approves renewed motion to review anti-renovictions bylaw for Ottawa

A for rent sign is displayed on a house in Ottawa on Friday, Oct. 14, 2022. A new report says Canada's average asking rent reached a new record in July. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Ottawa’s city council has voted to study an anti-renovictions bylaw after city staff had previously recommended shelving the idea.

The motion tabled by Coun. Ariel Troster will direct the city to craft a bylaw that would crack down on landlords who unlawfully evict their tenants to renovate, demolish or convert the unit for another use.

The motion was passed with 19 councillors voting for and six voting against.

Staff had previously recommended delaying a study into the issue, citing a desire to wait for the status of provincial anti-renoviction laws and to see how other municipalities fare.

Ottawa’s planning committee approved Troster’s motion last week, after some confusion was raised over whether existing provincial legislation would already protect tenants facing bad faith evictions.

The Ontario Helping Homebuyers, Protecting Tenants Act 2023 makes amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act. The bill has received Royal Assent, but no date has been given on when it might be implemented.

“We wouldn’t be in this position if the province did its job. This motion gives a chance for the province to respond,” Troster said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

“We’re asking them to enact the tenant protection that were already given Royal Assent and are literally just sitting there.”

City staff are being given three months before they begin their work to wait for a response from the province on the status of the legislation. If no response is given, including if a provincial election is called, staff will be tasked with reporting back to council by the spring of 2026.

The vote revives hope for many tenant advocates who say cracking down on bad faith evictions will help keep rents low and reduce homelessness.

The City of Ottawa has seen an increase in eviction notices handed out to tenants between 2010 and 2023, including a 29 per cent increase in N12 applications and a 107 per cent increase in N13 applications. There were 505 N12 notices or applications in Ottawa in 2023, and 104 N13 notices.

An N13 form is a notice to end your tenancy because the landlord wants to demolish the rental unit, repair it or convert it to another use, while N12 is a notice to end your tenancy because the landlord, purchaser or a family member requires the rental unit.

“The statistics are really alarming,” Troster said.

Staff previously suggested Ottawa would need to hire 12-15 new employees, and it would cost $1.8 million to $2.2 million to implement the bylaw.

Coun. David Hill said it could impose unnecessary bureaucracy to the rental market and make it difficult for a landlord to upgrade their unit from a duplex to a triplex, for example.

“The simplest and most effective way to regulate rental prices is through increasing supply,” he said. “Looking at N13 notifications as a bad thing is a disingenuous oversimplification of the complex ecosystem of the rental market.”

Other municipalities in Ontario have implemented anti-renovictions bylaws but it’s too soon to say if they’ve been effective.

Hamilton’s Renovation License and Relocation Bylaw to regulate repairs and renovations in rental units went into force on Jan. 1, while Toronto’s new rental renovation license bylaw will come into effect on July 31, 2025.