The Ford government walked back their controversial proposal after public backlash led by organizations such as ACORN.
The Ford government walked back a proposal last week to seek consultation on ending security of tenure for Ontario renters, in large part due to the opposition from groups like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
The controversial proposal, which would have effectively ended rent control for many tenancies, was revealed on Thursday, October 23, by Attorney General Doug Downey. It was part of the omnibus Bill 60, The Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, tabled by Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, Rob Flack.
Downey said the government would consult on "alternative options on lease agreement expiry that could allow landlords to control who occupies their units and for how long." This would end the right of tenants to continue their lease month-to-month, allowing landlords to evict or raise rent as much as they want after a fixed term.
The public backlash to the proposal was swift, thanks to groups like ACORN and the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO). ACORN stated that over 23,000 emails were sent to Premier Doug Ford, Attorney General Doug Downey, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Rob Flack, and local MPPs through its online form demanding they withdraw the proposal.
Flack announced on Sunday, three days later, in a social media post, that "now is not the time to consider changes to this system".
“This move would devastate everyone,” says Jordan Smith, Chair of the East of Adelaide chapter of London ACORN, speaking with the Journal. “The ramifications aren't just for the poor and working class. This move would financially devastate our province.”
He explains how the stripping away of protections for tenants would result in mass displacement and a rise in homelessness. Vulnerable tenants would go from "just in the black barely" to being "a drain on our system as a whole."
The Ontario government's rationale for their plan to eliminate security of tenure was premised on an idea that landlords were deliberately keeping rental units vacant, not entering the rental market, out of fear they wouldn’t be able to easily regain possession of their property from a problem tenant. Doug Downey said giving landlords more flexibility and control would “unlock tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of new units".
Critics pointed out that Downey provided no sources or data for this claim, that his numbers were implausible and contradicted by data from cities that collect vacancy tax.
Dania Majid, a lawyer for ACTO said the government’s rationale was "completely unfactual and not supported by evidence or data."
After walking back the plan to end security of tenure, Rob Flack announced, "We will continue to implement other common-sense reforms to strengthen the province's rental housing market."
Jordan Smith warns that the other changes remaining in Bill 60 are also rollbacks for rights of Ontario renters. “Every single one of these policy changes that they're proposing is designed to make things easier for landlords. Stripping away the protections for tenants at a time when tenants are more vulnerable than ever is just absolutely mind-boggling.”
One of the other provisions in Bill 60 removes compensation for own-use evictions. Landlords seeking to evict a tenant so that they can move in would no longer have to provide one month's rent compensation to the tenant, provided they give 120 days' notice.
“The landlord doesn't have to give anything to compensate them for displacing them from their home,” Smith says.
Other provisions include limiting tenants’ ability to raise new issues in Landlord and Tenant Board hearings, reducing the time in which to request a review of a decision made by the tribunal, and shortening the grace period for non-payment of rent from 14 days to 7 days.
The government has used the struggling "mom and pop" landlord narrative to frame the rental issue in sympathetic terms, however many landlords are corporations that “own hundreds, if not thousands of units,” says Smith. “They're profiting off of us at scale.”
He added that ACORN is not without empathy for the challenges faced by small landlords, but says that the changes the government wants to enact will do more harm than good.
“Common sense would be to protect the vulnerable,” Smith says. “You don't need to protect the person who's already got a full set of armour and a shield.”
“We already knew that the Ford government had left us behind, wasn't thinking about the poor, wasn't thinking about the vulnerable, wasn't thinking about the working class,” Smith said, referring to the government’s previous attack on rent control that exempted new builds after 2018.
Tenants in units built after 2018 have no protection from massive, year-over-year rent increases, which have been reported to be 10%, 15%, or even higher, leading to "economic evictions." As well, the government’s vacancy decontrol means landlords can charge whatever they like for vacant units which incentivizes them to seek turnover.
“It’s a ticking time bomb,” says Smith. “We're bleeding what few affordable units we have.”
The rollback of rent control in 2018 has already demonstrably increased the cost of housing across the province and is one of the primary drivers homelessness in the province, which has increased more than 25% since 2022.
Smith says ACORN played “a big part” in the pushback against the government’s proposal for fixed-term leases and their eventual withdrawal. “We need to stay vigilant because obviously this isn't the end of these kinds of attacks.
“Hopefully Sarnia residents read this and are inspired to call up and join in,” says Smith, “because the more neighbours we have, the more constituents, the better.”
Though Sarnia does have resources to help tenants, it does not have an ACORN chapter. Smith explains how ACORN differs from other non-profits. Organizations such as ACTO or Community Legal Assistance Sarnia (CLAS) are excellent resources for legal help for local tenants, however, ACORN is a grassroots, democratic organization whose volunteer members are made up of the same low- to moderate income tenants they represent.
“We'll often refer to ourselves as a tenants' union,” he tells us. “We organize in buildings or neighbourhoods where tenants are facing disrepair or bullying or wrongful evictions.
“We help them to organize, we give them the tools, and the education they need to gather momentum, get more members on board. We teach them what their rights are, and give them options for how to fight back.
“We have 190,000 plus members across Canada, a provincial and national board, all made up of volunteers. We have this really robust democratic structure, and we're able to take these campaigns to all levels of government.
“We're doing very important work right now,” he says. "My job as a leader with ACORN is always creating more leaders. It's making sure that everybody gets heard, making sure that everybody understands their value and it's showing people their strength, that they can themselves become leaders in their community.”
We reached out to conservative MPP Bob Bailey for comment but he did not respond by our deadline.
