What Can a Tenant Raise Against You at an Arrears Hearing in Ontario?

At the hearing of your own arrears application, the tenant is allowed to argue about something else. Section 82 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 requires the Board to let them raise any issue that could have been the subject of their own application, and section 82 (3) lets the Board make any order on that issue it could have made had they applied. So an application you filed about unpaid rent can produce an abatement, an order to do work, or a prohibition on your next rent increase. That section changes in four places on 2026-09-21, and the changes run in the owner's favour.

The short version.

• Section 82 reaches a section 69 application founded on a section 59 notice. Section 87 (2) carries the whole of it across to a standalone arrears application, so the money-only route does not avoid it.
• The tenant's obligations are in section 82 (2), and the timing is not in the Act at all. Rule 19.4 of the Board's Rules of Procedure sets it at 7 days before the hearing.
• On an application made on or after 2026-09-21 the tenant loses the statutory escape hatch in clause 82 (1) (b), and gains an obligation to pay half the arrears claimed before the hearing.
• Half means half of what was claimed in the application when it was filed, not half of what is owing by the hearing date.
• The transition turns on the day the application was made, not the day of the hearing. An application made on 2026-09-20 keeps the old rules however late it is heard.
• The same day brings a prescribed N4 form and a new restriction on the Board's power to postpone enforcement of an eviction order. Both are set out below.

This is the other side of a file we have written about from the tenant's end. Where the issue raised is maintenance, the substance is the same material set out in what happens if a tenant files a T6 against you in Ontario, arriving without a form and without a fee.

How does section 82 let a tenant turn your own application into theirs?

By obliging the Board to hear them. Subsection 82 (1) is directed at the Board rather than at either party. At a hearing of a landlord's application under section 69 for an order terminating a tenancy and evicting a tenant based on a notice under section 59, the Board "shall permit the tenant to raise any issue that could be the subject of an application made by the tenant under this Act" where the tenant either complies with subsection 82 (2) or, under clause (b), "provides an explanation satisfactory to the Board explaining why the tenant could not comply with the requirements set out in subsection (2)".

Read "any issue that could be the subject of an application made by the tenant" without narrowing it. It is not confined to maintenance. Anything in the tenant's own suite of applications is inside those words, so illegal charges, an interference complaint, a locking system changed without a key, harassment, and the whole of the maintenance ground all reach the same hearing.

Subsection 82 (3) is the part owners underestimate: "If a tenant raises an issue under subsection (1), the Board may make any order in respect of the issue that it could have made had the tenant made an application under this Act." That is not a set-off provision. It imports the remedy section that would have applied on the tenant's own form, which on a maintenance issue is the whole of section 30 (1), including its first paragraph, terminating the tenancy, and its sixth, seventh and eighth, which reach your rent.

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Which of your applications does section 82 actually reach?

Two, and the second one catches owners who thought they had stepped around the first.

Subsection 82 (1) names one application precisely: an application under section 69 for an order terminating a tenancy and evicting a tenant, based on a notice of termination under section 59. That is the arrears eviction. A section 69 application founded on some other notice is outside those words.

Then subsection 87 (2) says, in full: "Section 82 applies, with necessary modifications, to an application under subsection (1)." Subsection 87 (1) is the standalone arrears application, the one that seeks the money without seeking the tenancy. So choosing the money-only route does not take you outside section 82. The whole of it is carried across by reference, which also means the new obligations commencing on 2026-09-21 arrive on that route automatically, without subsection 87 (2) itself being touched.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly, because it removes an option owners reach for. If the reason you were considering the money-only application was to keep the hearing narrow, that is not what it does.

What can the Board actually order against you at that hearing?

Whatever it could have ordered had the tenant filed their own application about the same issue.

Take maintenance, because it is the ground with the widest remedy list. Section 30 (1) opens: "If the Board determines in an application under paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1) that a landlord has breached an obligation under subsection 20 (1) or section 161, the Board may do one or more of the following". Nine paragraphs follow. Three take money out, being the abatement, the tenant's repair costs and out-of-pocket expenses, and an authorization of work with its cost ordered against you. Three limit what you can charge: capping a new tenant's rent at the last lawful rent charged to the former tenant, prohibiting a notice of rent increase, and prohibiting an increase already noticed but not yet taken. One terminates the tenancy. One orders specified work within a specified time. The ninth is "Make any other order that it considers appropriate".

So an application you brought to recover arrears and end a tenancy can end with the tenancy continuing and your next rent increase blocked. All three prohibitions close on the same two conditions, and the qualifier in them is easy to drop. Each runs until the landlord has completed the items in work orders whose compliance period has expired and which were "found by the Board to be related to a serious breach of a health, safety, housing or maintenance standard", and has completed the work ordered under paragraph 4 found by the Board to be related to "a serious breach of the landlord's obligations under subsection 20 (1) or section 161". Both, not either. Note where "serious breach" sits, because it is not a threshold for imposing the prohibition, which is triggered by any breach under the opening words of subsection 30 (1). It qualifies the work you have to finish before the prohibition lifts. So a prohibition runs until that work is done rather than for a fixed period, and there is no date you can wait out.

Subsection 30 (2) is the provision to have ready against all of it: "In determining the remedy under this section, the Board shall consider whether the tenant or former tenant advised the landlord of the alleged breaches before applying to the Board." It is mandatory, it is directed at the remedy rather than at the finding, and on a section 82 issue it is the one argument that is built entirely out of your own records.

There is a ceiling on the money and none on the prohibitions. Subsection 207 (1) lets the Board "order the payment to any given person of an amount of money up to the greater of $10,000 and the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court". That jurisdiction is $50,000, set by section 1 (1) of O. Reg. 626/00 with effect from 2025-10-01. Carry the rule rather than the figure, because the figure moves with the regulation while the Act only ever points at it. The three rent prohibitions are not orders for the payment of money, so nothing in section 207 reaches them.

One limit belongs here. On the classes of rental unit listed in subsection 7 (1), paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of subsection 30 (1) are disapplied. Those classes are wider than the label suggests. They include a federal government complex, a designated housing project under the Housing Services Act, 2011, a non-profit housing project developed or acquired under a prescribed programme, a non-member unit of a non-profit housing co-operative, a complex operated by a religious institution for a charitable use on a non-profit basis, and a unit provided by an educational institution to a student or a member of its staff "that is not exempt from this Act under clause 5 (g)". A university, a federal department and a faith-based owner are in the same position as a housing provider on this point, and none of them would look for themselves under a social housing heading.

On those units the abatement and the work order remain fully available to a tenant under section 82, and so does paragraph 9, the catch-all. Only the three rent prohibitions are switched off, which is not the same as capping the exposure.

What does the tenant have to do first, and by when?

Three things, and the deadline is not in the Act.

Subsection 82 (2) sets the requirements: "1. The tenant shall give advance notice to the landlord of the tenant's intent to raise the issue at the hearing. 2. The notice shall be given within the time set out in the Rules. 3. The notice shall be given in writing and shall comply with the Rules."

Paragraph 2 sends you somewhere else for the number, and an owner counting off the statute will not find one. It lives in Rule 19.4 of the Board's Rules of Procedure, which opens: "Unless the LTB has directed or ordered otherwise, a tenant who intends to raise issues under sections 82(1) or 87(2) of the RTA during a hearing for a landlord's application about rent arrears shall provide the other parties and the LTB with the following at least 7 days before the scheduled CMH or hearing". Two items are listed under it, "a written description of each issue the tenant intends to raise" and "a copy of all documents, pictures and other evidence that the tenant intends to rely upon at the hearing".

Count those seven days on the Board's own convention, because this one is a Rule. Rule 1.12 says a number of days means calendar days, Rule 1.13 counts "by excluding the first day and including the last day", Rule 1.14 rolls a deadline ending on a holiday to the next day that is not one, and Rule 1.16 provides that Rules 1.12 to 1.15 "may not be waived or varied". For a hearing on Wednesday 2026-12-09 the tenant's material is due by Wednesday 2026-12-02.

Do not read Rule 19.4 as the only disclosure deadline in the hearing, because it is not even your own. Rule 19.1 binds "all parties" to provide the other parties and the Board with a copy of all the evidence they intend to rely on "at least 7 days before the CMH or hearing", and Rule 19.2 puts responding material at "at least 5 days before". Your case on the arrears runs on Rule 19.1. Rule 19.6, further down, is the separate five day window for answering what the tenant raises. An owner who diarizes only the second date has missed the first.

The Board's Rules print "Effective September 1, 2021" and "Updated July 1, 2026".

What happens if the tenant misses that deadline?

Less than owners hope, and Rule 19.5 is narrower than it first reads.

In full, a tenant "who fails to provide the LTB and other parties with a written description of each issue they intend to raise at the hearing as required in Rule 19.4 shall not be permitted to raise issues under sections 82(1) or 87(2) of the RTA during a hearing for a landlord's application about rent arrears unless the LTB is satisfied that the tenant could not comply with the requirements".

Three things sit in that sentence and each one matters to you.

• The exclusion is keyed to the written description alone, which is only the first of Rule 19.4's two items. Our reading is that a tenant who described the issues on time and produced the photographs late is caught by Rule 19.7 rather than by Rule 19.5, under which a party who fails to comply "may not rely on the evidence that was not disclosed as directed or ordered, unless otherwise ordered". That is a reading of the two sub-rules together and not something either states, and the difference matters, because Rule 19.5 keeps the issue out while Rule 19.7 keeps only the document out.
• It is confined to a landlord's application about rent arrears.
• It closes on an "unless" that belongs to the Rule itself and depends on nothing in the Act.

That third point becomes important on 2026-09-21, and it has a section of its own below.

What changes on 2026-09-21?

Four things in section 82, and subsection 82 (3) is not one of them.

The e-Laws consolidation carries a Note above each. The first reads: "On September 21, 2026, the day named by order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, subsection 82 (1) of the Act is repealed and the following substituted: (See: 2025, c. 14, Sched. 12, s. 6 (1))". The replacement keeps the Board's obligation and the words "any issue that could be the subject of an application made by the tenant under this Act", but ends "if the tenant complies with the requirements set out in subsection (2)". The lettered structure disappears and with it clause (b), the explanation satisfactory to the Board.

The second adds paragraphs 4 and 5 to subsection 82 (2), which is the money, and it has its own section below. The third replaces subsection 82 (4) and the fourth adds a new subsection 82 (5). Both of those are transition provisions. The amendments block prints them as one line, "2025, c. 14, Sched. 12, s. 6 (1-4) - 21/09/2026".

Note what does not move. Subsection 82 (3) is untouched, so the Board's power to make any order it could have made on the tenant's own application survives the amendment unchanged. Nothing about 2026-09-21 narrows what can be ordered. It narrows the door the issue comes through. The rest of that day is set out in what changes for Ontario landlords in September 2026.

How much does the tenant have to pay before the hearing, and to whom?

Half the arrears as claimed at filing, to you, at least seven days before the hearing. Each of those three has a qualification.

New paragraph 4 opens: "Unless the regulations provide otherwise, the tenant shall pay the following amounts to the landlord or, if the regulations so provide, into the Board:". Its first item is "Half of any rent arrears that were claimed in the application when it was filed" and its second is "Such other amounts as may be prescribed". Paragraph 5 then provides that those amounts "shall be paid before the hearing and in accordance with any prescribed timelines".

So the provision asks three questions of the regulations and we read all eight regulations made under the Act on 2026-09-12 to answer them. They are O. Reg. 516/06, O. Reg. 517/06, O. Reg. 394/10, O. Reg. 9/18, O. Reg. 906/21, O. Reg. 178/26, O. Reg. 240/26 and O. Reg. 308/26. Searching each for "82" and "section 82" returns nothing anywhere except in O. Reg. 516/06, and there the only substantive hit is one new section. Do not run that search alone, though, because the sibling section added in the same amending regulation is keyed to section 83 and not to section 82, and it is dealt with further down.

Section 4 of O. Reg. 241/26 adds section 8.3 to O. Reg. 516/06, commencing the same day: "For the purposes of paragraph 5 of subsection 82 (2) of the Act, the timeline for paying the amounts referred to in paragraph 4 of that subsection is no later than seven days before the hearing." That is the whole of what has been prescribed. Nothing displaces the opening "unless the regulations provide otherwise", nothing has been prescribed as another amount, and nothing directs payment into the Board.

Three consequences follow from that on the day it commences, and they are all read off the text rather than predicted.

• The money comes to you. Payment into the Board is conditional on a regulation so providing, and none does. Watch that one rather than assuming it is settled, because the same commencement day adds a regulation-making power at paragraph 13.0.4 of subsection 241 (1) contemplating an order "permitting or requiring the tenant to make such payments into the Board".
• It is half of what was claimed when the application was filed. Not half of the arrears at the hearing date, which on a file that has run for months is a materially different number, and not half of the judgment. Arrears that accrue after filing do not increase it.
• Seven days, and not necessarily the same seven days as Rule 19.4's. Rule 1.12 is limited by its own words to "an LTB order or a Rule", and section 8.3 is neither, so the Board's calendar-day convention does not by its terms reach it. A regulatory period is counted under the Legislation Act, 2006, where section 89 (3) excludes the day of the first event and includes the day of the second, "even if the reference is to “at least” or “not less than” a number of days", and section 89 (1) provides that "Time limits that would otherwise expire on a holiday are extended to include the next day that is not a holiday".

Those two definitions of a holiday are not the same, which is the trap. The Rules define a holiday at Rule 1.1 as "any Saturday, Sunday or other day on which the LTB's offices are closed". The Legislation Act lists them at section 88 (2), and Remembrance Day is paragraph 9 on that list. So on a hearing where the seven day date falls on 11 November, the two periods can come apart, and they come apart in the direction that gives the tenant the later date. Work the payment date off the Legislation Act and the disclosure date off the Rules, rather than assuming one date covers both.

Does an application filed before 2026-09-21 get the old rules or the new ones?

The old ones, and the hearing date does not change that.

The replacement subsection 82 (4) reads: "Subsection (1), as it read immediately before the day subsection 6 (1) of Schedule 12 to the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025 came into force, continues to apply to any application described in subsection (1) that was made before that day and has not been finally determined before that day, even if the hearing of the application is on or after that day." The new subsection 82 (5) does the same job for subsection 82 (2).

Two conditions have to hold together for the old rules to continue: the application was made before 2026-09-21, and it has not been finally determined before that day. The closing words settle the question owners ask first. A hearing held after the commencement day on an application made before it runs on the old section 82.

Work that on a Gananoque file. Rent is unpaid for a monthly tenancy and you give an N4 in person on Tuesday 2026-09-01.

• Section 59 (1) as it reads today allows a termination date no earlier than "the 14th day after the notice is given" for a monthly tenancy, so the earliest date you can put on it is Tuesday 2026-09-15.
• Subsection 74 (1) bars an application under section 69 based on a section 59 notice "before the day following the termination date specified in the notice", so the earliest you can file is Wednesday 2026-09-16.
• That application was made before 2026-09-21. Subsections 82 (4) and 82 (5) preserve the old rules for it, so the tenant keeps the clause (b) explanation route and owes you nothing before the hearing, whether it is heard in November or in February.

Now move the same file three weeks. You give the N4 in person on Tuesday 2026-09-22. The replacement section 59 (1) allows a termination date no earlier than "the 7th day after the notice is given" for every periodic tenancy, so the earliest date on the notice is Tuesday 2026-09-29 and the earliest filing date is Wednesday 2026-09-30. That application is made after the commencement day, so the tenant has to meet subsection 82 (2) with no explanation route, and has to pay half the arrears claimed at filing no later than seven days before the hearing.

The second notice has to be on a different piece of paper. O. Reg. 308/26 comes into force on the same day and its section 1 requires a notice of termination given under section 59 to be "in version 1 of the form titled “Notice to End Your Tenancy Early for Non-payment of Rent (N4)”, available on the Landlord and Tenant Board's website". As at 2026-09-12 the Board had published nothing operational about that date; its newest legislative update is dated 2026-06-30 and the L1 and L9 instruction packages carry a July 2026 footer. Check the forms page before serving rather than reusing the copy in your templates folder.

One thing not to carry over from the rest of the Act. Subsection 69 (2) gives a landlord 30 days after the termination date to apply, but subsection 69 (3) says that limit "does not apply with respect to an application based on the tenant's failure to pay rent". There is no outer deadline on an arrears application, so nothing in this section is a reason to file a file that is not ready.

Those dates assume the notice was handed over in person, because the day a notice is "given" depends on how it was served and a mailed notice is not given on the day it is posted. We set the service rules out in how to serve a notice to a tenant in Ontario.

Does the Board's own Rule still offer the tenant a way in after 2026-09-21?

On its face, yes, and this is the part to watch rather than to rely on.

Rule 19.5 lets a tenant who missed the written description still raise section 82 (1) issues "unless the LTB is satisfied that the tenant could not comply with the requirements". That is the Rules carrying their own version of the relief the statute currently offers in clause 82 (1) (b). From 2026-09-21 the statute removes its version and makes compliance with subsection 82 (2) the single condition.

We searched the whole of the Rules of Procedure on 2026-09-12 for "September 21", for "2026" and for "82". September 21 appears nowhere. Every occurrence of 2026 is the "Updated July 1, 2026" line in the header and the footer, or one of the two review deadlines in Rule 26. The only occurrences of 82 are the two references to "82(1)" in Rules 19.4 and 19.5. There is no amendment to Rule 19 for that date, so the published Rules go into it unchanged.

Our own view is that the argument moves rather than disappears. The tenant who could not comply now has a Rule to point at instead of a subsection, and paragraph 2 of subsection 82 (2) still leaves the timing to the Rules, which is the hook that keeps Rule 19 in the picture. That is a reading of the two instruments together rather than something either source states, and it is not a prediction of how any Member will resolve it. What an owner should take from it is narrower and safe: do not plan on the door being shut, and do not tell a hearing that it is.

Does this change when you should file?

It changes the cost of rushing, which is the opposite of the usual advice.

Set the two routes side by side for a notice you have not yet served. Serve before the commencement day and you are on a 14 day notice period, the tenant keeps the explanation route into your hearing, the tenant owes you nothing in advance, and a postponement of enforcement under clause 83 (1) (b) needs neither your consent nor any prescribed condition. Serve on or after it and you are on a 7 day notice period, the explanation route is gone, half the arrears claimed is payable to you seven days before the hearing, and section 8.4 puts a postponement behind your consent or the conditions. Four changes, all running the same direction.

Two things belong beside that before anyone treats it as a plan.

• Rent keeps accruing while you wait, and the arrears figure that fixes the payment obligation is the one claimed at filing, so waiting raises the number you claim and the half that goes with it. That cuts in your favour on this particular calculation, which is exactly why it is worth checking against the rest of the file rather than in isolation.
• The tenant's window to pay is far longer than the notice period, and it has three stages rather than one. Section 59 (3) voids the notice if the tenant pays before the day you apply. Subsection 74 (2) then discontinues the application if the tenant pays before the Board issues the eviction order, and note what that subsection requires alongside the arrears and the additional rent, at clause (c): "the landlord's application fee". Subsection 74 (4) voids the eviction order itself if the tenant pays before the order becomes enforceable. So a longer gap between the notice and the filing is a longer window at the first stage only, and section 59 carries no limit on how many notices you may give over a tenancy, so a voided notice is not the end of the route.

None of that is a reason to sit on a file that should have been dealt with in July. It is a reason not to file on 2026-09-18 for the sake of filing.

What should you do when the tenant's material lands?

Answer it, because Rule 19.6 gives you a window and it is shorter than theirs.

Rule 19.6 provides that where a tenant has complied with Rule 19.4, the landlord "must provide the other parties and the LTB with any responding documents, pictures and other evidence the Landlord intends to rely upon at least 5 days before the scheduled hearing". The stray capital on "Landlord" is the Board's own. On a hearing on Wednesday 2026-12-09, the tenant's material is due Wednesday 2026-12-02 and yours is due Friday 2026-12-04.

That leaves two days to assemble a response to issues you may be seeing for the first time, which is the practical argument for keeping a maintenance record as a matter of course rather than building one after an application is served.

If two days is not enough, both of the relevant rules are written with a way out and it runs in your direction as much as the tenant's. Rule 19.4 opens "Unless the LTB has directed or ordered otherwise" and Rule 19.7 closes on "unless otherwise ordered", so a direction can be asked for. Asking early is the difference between a request and an excuse.

• Read the written description item by item and match each to a date. A section 82 issue is a separate question about a separate obligation and each one has its own history.
• Pull the log for each item and establish two dates: when you were first told or should have known, and when the work was finished.
• Assemble invoices, work orders to trades and dated photographs, numbered consecutively, with a table of contents where there is more than one item.
• Note anything raised that is not in the written description, because that is the Rule 19.5 question rather than a question about the merits.
• Diarize your own 5 day date the moment the tenant's material arrives, not the moment you have finished reading it.

Does section 83 still let the Board refuse or postpone your eviction?

Yes on refusing, and the power to postpone is narrowed on the same day. That narrowing is worth naming on its own, because it is not in the Act at all.

Subsection 83 (1) provides that on an application for an order evicting a tenant the Board may, despite any other provision of the Act or the tenancy agreement, "(a) refuse to grant the application unless satisfied, having regard to all the circumstances, that it would be unfair to refuse; or (b) order that the enforcement of the eviction order be postponed for a period of time."

On 2026-09-21 clause 83 (1) (b) is amended by adding "subject to any prescribed limitations or conditions" at the beginning, and the co-operative mirror at clause 94.12 (1) (b) carries an identically worded Note on the same date. The limitation itself arrives the same day, in the regulation. Section 5 of O. Reg. 241/26 adds section 8.4 to O. Reg. 516/06, which opens: "The Board may order that the enforcement of an eviction order be postponed under clause 83 (1) (b) of the Act only if the landlord consents to the postponement or if the following conditions are satisfied". On an arrears application the conditions include that "it would not be unfair to the landlord or other tenants of the residential complex to postpone the enforcement of the eviction order" and that "there are compelling grounds to postpone the enforcement of the eviction order".

Read the word "only". From that day a postponement on an arrears eviction needs either your consent or the conditions met, where today it needs neither. If you take one thing from the September package as an owner with an arrears file, it is this, and it is not in the Act, so a reader working from section 83 alone will not find it.

Now the half of section 83 that runs the other way, because it is the reason the maintenance record in a section 82 issue reaches further than the abatement. Subsection 83 (2) is mandatory: on an application under section 69 based on a section 59 notice the Board "shall not grant the application unless it has reviewed the circumstances and considered whether or not it should exercise its powers under subsection (1)". Subsection 83 (3) is stronger still. The Board "shall refuse to grant the application where satisfied that" one of several things is so, and the first of them is that "the landlord is in serious breach of the landlord's responsibilities under this Act or of any material covenant in the tenancy agreement".

So the maintenance issue a tenant raises under section 82 is not only a claim for money against you. On a serious breach it is an answer to your eviction. That is the sharpest reason an owner with an arrears file should close out open work orders before the hearing rather than after it.

Does any of this reach a co-operative or a care home?

Differently in each case, and the co-operative is where owners run two things together.

A member unit of a non-profit housing co-operative is outside the Act under clause 5 (c), which excludes it "except for Part V.1, and except for those provisions in other Parts that are needed to give effect to Part V.1". Read to the end of that. Part V.1 is the termination of occupancy regime for co-operatives and it has its own machinery, which is why clause 94.12 (1) (b) exists as the mirror of clause 83 (1) (b) rather than the co-operative simply borrowing section 83.

A non-member unit in the same building is the opposite case. It stays inside the Act under paragraph 4 of subsection 7 (1), so section 82 applies to it in full and only paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of subsection 30 (1) are switched off. One co-operative, two units, two different answers at the same hearing.

A care home under Part IX is inside the regime. Nothing disapplies section 82, and Part IX adds the tenant's own applications about care services and meals to the list of things that "could be the subject of an application made by the tenant", which widens rather than narrows what can arrive. A long-term care home is a different animal, because clause 5 (e) puts accommodation subject to the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 outside the Act altogether.

Should you run an arrears hearing yourself or hand it to a manager?

The filing is administration. The hearing is a record, and the record is made months earlier.

An organized owner can serve an N4 correctly, count the days, file on the right date and diarize a 5 day disclosure deadline. Those are four calendar tasks and nothing about them needs a firm.

What is harder is the thing section 82 actually tests. When a tenant raises maintenance inside your arrears application, what decides it is whether you were told, whether you should have known, how long the response took and whether it was appropriate to effect the repair. Those are four separate findings, each proved by something somebody wrote down at the time, and none of them can be created after the application is served. If the order goes against you, the routes out are set out in what you can do if you disagree with an LTB order, and all of them are more expensive than the log would have been.

That is where KEILTY earns its keep on an arrears file. A request logged when it arrives, attended on a timeframe that matches how serious it is, and closed out with an invoice attached, is a file that answers a section 82 issue by existing. It is ordinary work done consistently, and it is cheaper than an abatement and a blocked rent increase on a tenancy you were trying to end anyway.

What do owners ask about section 82 and arrears hearings?

Can a tenant really raise maintenance at a hearing about unpaid rent? Yes. Subsection 82 (1) requires the Board to permit a tenant to raise any issue that could be the subject of an application made by the tenant under the Act, at the hearing of a landlord's section 69 application founded on a section 59 notice. Subsection 82 (3) then lets the Board make any order on that issue it could have made had the tenant applied, so the remedy is not limited to a set-off against the arrears.

Does filing a money-only arrears application avoid section 82? No. Subsection 87 (2) provides that "Section 82 applies, with necessary modifications, to an application under subsection (1)", which is the standalone arrears application. The whole of section 82 is carried across by reference, including the obligations commencing on 2026-09-21.

How much does a tenant have to pay before the hearing from 2026-09-21? Half of any rent arrears claimed in the application when it was filed, plus any other prescribed amounts, and nothing further has been prescribed. It is payable to the landlord, because payment into the Board depends on a regulation so providing and none does, and section 8.3 of O. Reg. 516/06 sets the timeline at no later than seven days before the hearing.

If I file before 2026-09-21, which rules apply at a hearing held afterwards? The old ones. Subsections 82 (4) and 82 (5) continue the former subsections 82 (1) and 82 (2) for any application made before that day and not finally determined before it, "even if the hearing of the application is on or after that day".

What is the deadline for the tenant to give notice of the issues? The Act does not give a number. Paragraph 2 of subsection 82 (2) leaves it to the Rules, and Rule 19.4 requires a written description of each issue and all the evidence at least 7 days before the hearing. Rule 19.6 then gives the landlord until 5 days before the hearing to respond to what the tenant raised, which is separate from the landlord's own Rule 19.1 obligation to disclose their case at least 7 days before.

Can the Board still postpone enforcement of an eviction order for arrears? Yes, but from 2026-09-21 not freely. Section 8.4 of O. Reg. 516/06 provides that the Board may order a postponement under clause 83 (1) (b) "only if the landlord consents to the postponement or if the following conditions are satisfied", and on an arrears application those conditions include that postponement would not be unfair to the landlord or other tenants and that there are compelling grounds for it. Separately, subsection 83 (3) still requires the Board to refuse an eviction application where satisfied the landlord is in serious breach of their responsibilities under the Act.

Facing an arrears hearing and not sure what your file says about the rest of the tenancy? Get in touch and we will work through the items and the dates with you.

This post is general information about Ontario residential tenancy law as of 2026-09-12, not legal advice. Legislation, regulations and tribunal practice change. For advice on a specific property or situation, speak with a lawyer or licensed paralegal.