By A.J. Keilty, President, KEILTY Realty Management
A T6 is the tenant's application about maintenance. It is made under paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, it asks the Board to determine that you have breached your repair obligation under subsection 20 (1) or section 161, and it has to be filed within one year of the day the conduct occurred. It costs the tenant $53, or $48 through the Tribunals Ontario Portal. If the Board finds the breach, section 30 (1) gives it nine things it can do, and three of those nine limit what you can charge in rent.
The short version.
This is the tenant's side of facts we have written about from the other direction. If an inspector has issued you a work order, that is a different process with a different deadline, set out in what to do if you get a work order on an Ontario rental property.
One thing only: a finding that you breached section 20 (1) or section 161. Paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1) reads, in full: "An order determining that the landlord has breached an obligation under subsection 20 (1) or section 161." Everything else on the form is a remedy that follows from that finding.
Section 20 (1) is the obligation: "A landlord is responsible for providing and maintaining a residential complex, including the rental units in it, in a good state of repair and fit for habitation and for complying with health, safety, housing and maintenance standards." Three separate tests sit inside that sentence and a tenant only has to succeed on one. Good state of repair, fit for habitation, and compliance with a standard are not the same question, and a unit can fail the first while passing the third.
Section 20 (2) closes off the argument that the tenant took the unit as they found it: "Subsection (1) applies even if the tenant was aware of a state of non-repair or a contravention of a standard before entering into the tenancy agreement." Read the whole of it. It reaches awareness of a contravention of a standard as well as awareness of non-repair, so a tenant who saw the problem at the showing and signed anyway has not given anything up.
The Board's forms, filing and fees page lists the form as "T6 – Tenant Application about Maintenance". Its fee table gives the title differently, as "Form T6: Tenant Application about Maintenance", and puts the T6 in one row with the T1, T2 and T5 at "$53 or $48 through the Tribunals Ontario Portal". No version number or date is printed for it. The page also states, in terms, "Please note that LTB fees are non-refundable."
Treat that fee as a ceiling rather than a floor. Rule 2 of the Rules of Procedure provides for fee waivers on request, so for an applicant who qualifies the cost of putting your maintenance record in front of a Member is nothing at all.
One year, and the day it runs from is the part worth slowing down on.
Section 29 (2) reads, in full: "No application may be made under subsection (1) more than one year after the day the alleged conduct giving rise to the application occurred." Note two things about how that is built. It is drafted as a prohibition on making the application rather than as a limit on the remedy. And it excludes the day itself by its own words, "after the day", so you do not need to borrow a counting rule from anywhere to find the first day of the year.
The difficulty is the phrase "the day the alleged conduct occurred", because a leak is not a day. Interpretation Guideline 5, Breach of Maintenance Obligations, gives the Board's answer in two parts. On a one-off: "When a breach is a single event such as an illegal entry, the limitation period begins on the day the event happened." On a continuing problem: "Where the breach is not a single event but is ongoing or recurring as may be the case with some maintenance obligations or with non-compliance with standards, then the breach occurs over a period of time and the limitation period runs from the date that the repair is completed or the standard is complied with."
Work that on a Napanee file. A tenant reports water coming through a bedroom ceiling on Monday 2025-11-03. You get it diagnosed, get the roof section replaced and finish the interior repair on Tuesday 2026-02-17.
Take the point rather than the date. The clock you are exposed on does not start when the problem starts. On the Board's own reading it starts when you finish fixing it, so an owner who leaves a deficiency open for eight months has not run out the limitation period, they have moved it.
One caution on counting. Rule 1.12 of the Rules of Procedure says that "Where an LTB order or a Rule refers to a number of days this means calendar days", and Rules 1.13 to 1.15 build the counting convention on that. Section 29 (2) is in the Act rather than in an order or a Rule, and it is expressed in years rather than days, so those Rules do not by their terms reach it. Work an anniversary date from the provision's own words and do not assume a weekend rolls forward.
There is a gap in the published guidance worth knowing about before somebody quotes the wrong thing at you. The Board's T6 instructions state the limitation twice, in identical words, and only for one branch of it: "If the problem has been fixed, you must apply within one year of the date the problem was fixed." That is the whole of what that page says about timing. It never addresses an ongoing, unfixed problem and it never cites section 29 (2).
Nine things, and it can do more than one of them. 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". The nine are:
Paragraph 9 is the one to hold in mind when you are told what the exposure is, because the list is not closed and a Member who wants a remedy outside paragraphs 1 to 8 has an express power to reach it. Paragraph 1 deserves the same attention: terminating the tenancy is on the list of remedies available to a tenant who applies about maintenance.
Three of them take money out and three of them limit what you can charge. The second group is the one to price, because a prohibition is not expressed as an amount anywhere in the order and you have to work out what it is worth yourself.
The money out is paragraph 2, the abatement, paragraph 5, the tenant's repair costs and out-of-pocket expenses, and paragraph 3, which authorizes work and orders you to pay its cost. Guideline 5 makes a practical point about the last of those when it discusses combining paragraphs 3 and 4: "It would usually be advisable to have evidence, through estimates, of the cost of the repairs or replacements." An unanswered estimate is an unanswered claim.
The three prohibitions are different from each other and worth separating. Paragraph 6 caps what you can charge the next tenant at the last lawful rent charged to the former tenant, which removes the vacancy uplift on that unit. Paragraph 7 stops you giving a notice of rent increase at all. Paragraph 8 stops you taking an increase you have already served notice of, where the increase has not been taken before the order issues, so a notice served in good faith three months ago can be stranded by an order made next week.
All three run "until the landlord has" completed two things: the items in work orders for which the compliance period has expired and which the Board found related to a serious breach of a health, safety, housing or maintenance standard, and the repairs or other work ordered under paragraph 4 that the Board found related to a serious breach of the obligations under subsection 20 (1) or section 161.
Note where "serious breach" sits in that, because it is easy to read it as a threshold and it is not one. It does not qualify the power to impose the prohibition, which is triggered by any breach under the opening words of subsection 30 (1). It qualifies only the work you have to finish before the prohibition lifts. So a prohibition runs until the work is done rather than for a fixed period, and there is no end date you can wait out.
On a building where the rent sits materially below market, paragraph 6 can be worth more than the abatement several times over, and it attaches to the unit rather than to the tenant who applied.
Yes, and it is one of the few places in this part of the Act where the Board is told what it must think about.
Section 30 (2) reads, in full: "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." Note where it bites. It is directed at the remedy rather than at the finding, so it does not defeat the application, and it is mandatory rather than permissive.
Guideline 5 gives it a heading of its own and sets out four things worth knowing before you rely on it. A failure to notify does not mean the application, or even the item, must be dismissed. Notice does not have to be in writing, though the Guideline calls written notice the best practice. Where a tenant alleges oral notice they have to convince the Member through their testimony that notice was given to the landlord or an employee, and when. And the provision carries two exceptions in how the Board applies it: "However, failure to advise the landlord will affect the remedies to be ordered, unless the landlord knew about the problem already or should have known."
Read that last clause carefully, because it is where a maintenance record earns its keep. "Should have known" is not about what you were told. A deficiency visible in a common area, or one your own staff attended and did not report on, can be something you should have known about whether or not anybody sent you an email. Guideline 5 extends the same reasoning to a tenant who reasonably believed others had already complained, or that the problem should have been obvious to you or your employees.
So the useful document on a T6 file is not a denial. It is a dated log of what was reported, by whom, when you attended and what you did, kept as a matter of course rather than assembled afterwards.
The Act does not say. That is not a gap in this post, it is a fact about the statute, and it matters because it tells you where to look instead.
The word "evidence" appears in the Act, but not once inside sections 29, 30 or 31. Neither the application provision nor the remedies provision says anything about what a tenant must produce, what standard they must meet, or who carries the burden. Section 201 gives the Board its general powers over a proceeding and section 240 sits in the offences Part, and neither is directed at a tenant's burden on a maintenance application.
Guideline 5 is no more explicit on burden than the Act is. It contains no reference to an onus, a burden of proof, a balance of probabilities or a standard of proof. What it supplies instead is how the Board handles particular kinds of proof. On an official finding: "If a notice of violation, work order or other order has been issued for this complex or unit, it represents a finding by a public official that the landlord has not complied with the standard. Once the tenant files a copy of the notice or order, a Member will be entitled to accept this as evidence of non-compliance with a standard. However, the landlord is entitled to have the issue determined by the Board if they dispute the notice or order. In such a case, the landlord must raise this dispute, file the document and bring forward evidence to prove their position."
Read the closing sentence twice. Where an inspector's order is filed against you, the work of displacing it is yours, in three steps: raise the dispute, file the document, and bring evidence. Turning up to say the order was wrong is none of the three.
Where there is no official finding, the Board decides for itself, and Guideline 5 adds a sentence to read as an entitlement rather than a warning: "However, the landlord is entitled then to introduce the standard, and to show that they are meeting it." The passage it closes explains that a tenant who cannot prove the exact nature of a standard does not lose, because the Member may consider the item under the other two tests in section 20 (1). Both halves are true at once.
One more thing about the published guidance, because it decides what a tenant arrives with. The Board's T6 instructions say nothing about evidence at all. The words evidence, photograph, receipt, proof and supporting do not appear on that page, the word inspector does not appear, and neither does the phrase work order. Its section headed "What to include when you file your application" requires the completed form and the fee, and adds that the application will be refused if either is missing. A tenant who follows that page exactly has filed a valid application and brought nothing.
Seven days before the hearing, and five if you are responding. This is the part of a T6 decided on a calendar rather than on the merits, and the part the tenant's own instructions never mention.
Rule 19 of the Rules of Procedure, headed Disclosure and Evidence, sets it out. Rule 19.1: "Unless the LTB has directed or ordered otherwise, all parties to a matter that has been scheduled for a CMH or a hearing must provide the other parties and the LTB with a copy of all documents, pictures and other evidence that the party intends to rely upon at least 7 days before the CMH or hearing." Rule 19.2 puts responding material at "at least 5 days before the scheduled CMH or hearing". Rule 19.3 lets the Board direct disclosure at any time before the hearing has been completed, "unless the LTB is satisfied the document is privileged".
Rule 19.7 is the sanction and it is short: "A party who fails to comply with Rule 19 or an order or direction for disclosure may not rely on the evidence that was not disclosed as directed or ordered, unless otherwise ordered." The Rules print "Effective September 1, 2021" and "Updated July 1, 2026".
The Board also publishes a Practice Direction on Evidence, which carries a bare "March, 2024" at its foot with no label on the date. It reads evidence broadly, naming documents, pictures, physical objects, audio and video recordings, emails, text messages and social media posts. It also makes a point worth absorbing before you file: "An item does not automatically become evidence once it has been given to the LTB or the other parties. It is up to the LTB Member hearing the application to decide whether to accept an item as evidence during the hearing." On form, it requires material to be readable and consecutively numbered, and where more than one item is submitted, to carry a table of contents identifying each item in order and by page number.
Two consequences. Your maintenance log, invoices and photographs are worth nothing if they arrive on the day, so the seven day date goes in the diary the moment the notice of hearing does. And the tenant is under the same rule, so material not disclosed by their deadline is material you can ask to have excluded.
Yes, and this is the route that reaches the largest number of owners, because it does not need a form, a fee or a filing date of its own.
Section 82 lets a tenant raise maintenance inside your application. At the hearing of a landlord's application to terminate for arrears, 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". So an L1 you filed about unpaid rent can come back at you as an abatement claim about a bathroom fan, and the tenant has paid nothing to put it there.
That section changes on 2026-09-21, by section 6 (1) of Schedule 12 to the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, with subsections 82 (2) and 82 (4) amended the same day. The practical effect is owner-favourable. The current provision lets a tenant raise issues either by complying with the advance notice requirements in subsection 82 (2) or by giving the Board a satisfactory explanation of why they could not comply. The replacement removes the second of those, so from that date the written advance notice becomes the only way in. We set out the rest of that day in what changes for Ontario landlords in September 2026.
The related point is what a T6 cannot carry. Section 30 is the remedies provision for paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1). Section 31 is a different provision, opening "If the Board determines that a landlord, a superintendent or an agent of a landlord has done one or more of the activities set out in paragraphs 2 to 6 of subsection 29 (1)". Those other paragraphs cover things like substantial interference and altering the locking system, and they are made on a T2 at the same $53 or $48. So the administrative fine in section 31 (1) (d), capped at "the greater of $10,000 and the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court" and payable to the Board rather than to the tenant, is not available on a maintenance application, and neither is the section 31 (2) order for a tenant induced to vacate. A tenant with both kinds of complaint files both forms, so that is a point about which application you are answering rather than about your total exposure.
Then the same facts are running on two tracks with different applicants, deadlines and burdens.
The inspector's order is yours to challenge. Section 226 (1) provides that "If a landlord who has received an inspector's work order is not satisfied with its terms, the landlord may, within 20 days after the day the order is issued, apply to the Board for a review of the work order." Under section 226 (2) the Board may confirm or vary the order, rescind it if it finds you have complied, or quash it. The power to rescind is conditional on compliance rather than being a free-standing option.
The T6 is the tenant's and it runs on the one year in section 29 (2). So the twenty days can be long gone while the tenant's window is still open, and on Guideline 5's reading of an ongoing breach the tenant's year may not have started at all. The two applications can be heard by different Members on different days about the same ceiling.
Guideline 5 deals with the argument that an order whose compliance period has not run should not count yet, and it does not accept it. The fact that another authority has given you more time "does not mean that there is no problem", and "the issue should not be dismissed on this basis". But the paragraph has a tail worth arguing: "Of course, if the work order was the first way that the landlord discovered this problem existed, the fact that the compliance period has not yet expired for a non-urgent item may indicate a different remedy than a long-standing problem that was ignored."
That does not keep the order out of the hearing. What it opens is a different remedy where the order was genuinely the first you knew of the problem and the item is not urgent, which is a submission about quantum rather than liability, and it depends on showing what you knew and when.
No, and Guideline 5 is careful in both directions, so an owner should not take either half on its own.
On breadth it is emphatic: "The landlord's obligation under section 20 to provide and maintain the premises in a good state of repair is very broad. It would include anything that was capable of being repaired." Money is not an answer either, because the obligation "is not subject to whether the landlord has available funds".
On knowledge it is equally clear: "A landlord may assert that they are not liable for the unexpected results of maintenance problems of which they were not aware or that they could not reasonably be expected to have knowledge of. This is indeed the law, as established by two Ontario Court of Appeal decisions." One of those is McQuestion v. Schneider (1975), 8 O.R. (2d) 249 (C.A.), which the Guideline records in a footnote as having rejected "the tenant's argument that this duty to repair imposed a strict or absolute liability on the landlord".
What follows from the two together is a standard about response rather than outcome: "However, it would appear that the cases generally support the principle that, if the landlord responded within a reasonable time, and the response was appropriate to effect the repair, no abatement or other remedy should be ordered." On what a reasonable time is, the Guideline continues in the next paragraph that it depends principally on the seriousness of the state of non-repair, its possible effects on the tenant, and the availability of materials and contractors.
That is a defence with two limbs and you need both. Responding quickly with something that does not work is not it, and neither is the right repair six months late. A failed heater in a cold snap and a cracked tile do not share a reasonable time.
Guidelines are not law, and the disclaimer printed on the face of Guideline 5 says so. It carries the bare date December 15, 2018 with no label of any kind, which puts it more than seven years behind the Rules of Procedure it sits beside, last updated 2026-07-01. What it tells you is how the Board has said it approaches the question, which is what your evidence gets built against.
Not from the Act, because the Act does not say. Guideline 5 opens the point that way: "There is no guidance in the RTA to assist the Member in determining the amount of an abatement of rent."
What it puts in place of a rule is a two factor test and a benchmark. "In determining the amount to be ordered, the Member will consider the period of time that the problem existed and the severity of the problem in terms of its effect on the tenant. The test should be the impact on the average tenant or the impact a reasonable person would expect this problem to have had on a tenant." So the tenant's own distress is not the measure, and neither is your cost of the repair. Guideline 5 then adds a qualification an owner should have ready: "If the tenant has a particular susceptibility to this particular problem, the landlord can only reasonably be liable to the tenant for more significant penalties if it can be shown that the landlord knew of the particular condition of the tenant."
The arithmetic is proportional, and the consequence is worth spelling out: "The usual approach will be to look at an abatement as a portion of the rent. In other words, a Member will assess what percentage of the package of shelter and services rented by the tenant is not available to the tenant. That will then be expressed as a dollar amount, and logically this will be greater if the rent is greater." The same defect in a $2,400 unit and a $1,200 unit produces two different numbers on identical facts.
Three limits belong with it and each is a reason to move early. An abatement is compensation rather than punishment, and the Guideline says so in terms. Where you fixed it in time it does not arise: "If the landlord has already rectified the problem, and did so within a reasonable time, an abatement is not appropriate." And where the application was the first you heard of it: "This remedy is not appropriate where the landlord was not aware of the problem until the application was filed, but they should be ordered to fix the problem." Note the second half of that sentence. Not knowing spares you the abatement, not the work.
Section 16 applies to both sides: "When a landlord or a tenant becomes liable to pay any amount as a result of a breach of a tenancy agreement, the person entitled to claim the amount has a duty to take reasonable steps to minimize the person's losses." A tenant who let a small problem become a large one has that duty too.
Four checks, and the answer differs on each.
A mobile home park or land lease community is inside this regime and then some. Paragraph 1 of subsection 29 (1) names section 161 alongside subsection 20 (1), and section 161 opens "In addition to a landlord's obligations under section 20" before adding responsibilities for garbage, park roads, snow, water and sewage, grounds and common buildings. Guideline 5 says in a footnote that it does not discuss those additional responsibilities, so the application route is the same and the guidance available to you is thinner. We set out what else changes on a site in what rules apply to a mobile home park or land lease community in Ontario.
A care home under Part IX is inside it, and this is a place to be careful what you mean by a care home. Part IX adds requirements about care services and meals on top of the tenancy, and nothing in the Act disapplies section 20, so the obligation and the T6 route both survive. A long-term care home is a different animal. Clause 5 (e) puts living accommodation subject to the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 and several other named statutes outside the Act altogether, so there is no section 20 obligation and no T6 there at all.
Social housing is where the answer genuinely changes. Section 7 (1) opens by disapplying a long list of provisions, and the very first item on that list is "Paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 of subsection 30 (1)". Sections 20, 29 and 30 are not on the list. So on a section 7 (1) unit the maintenance route and the abatement are fully open, and the three rent prohibitions priced above are not available at all.
A non-profit housing co-operative member unit is outside the regime. Clause 5 (c) provides that the Act does not apply to "living accommodation that is a member unit of a non-profit housing co-operative, except for Part V.1", which is the termination of occupancy regime for co-operatives. So there is no section 20 obligation and no T6 on a member unit. A non-member unit is different: it stays inside the Act as paragraph 4 of subsection 7 (1), which means paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 do not reach it either.
None of this is in the Act. It is process, and it decides whether the evidence you already have ever reaches a Member.
One thing an owner should hear plainly. Losing a T6 can take money out twice over, once as an abatement and again as a rent increase you cannot take. If an order goes against you, the routes out are a request to review under Rule 26 or an appeal to the Divisional Court on a question of law under section 210, both set out in what you can do if you disagree with an LTB order. The cheaper outcome is the one where the log shows you were told, you attended and you finished, and none of that can be created after the application arrives.
The parts you can run yourself are real. Reading the application, diarizing two disclosure dates and assembling a numbered bundle are administration, and an organized owner with a unit or two can do all three.
What is harder is the material underneath them. A T6 is decided on a record of what happened over months, and that record either exists or it does not by the time the application lands. Whether you were told, whether you should have known, how long the response took and whether it was appropriate to effect the repair are four separate findings, each proved by something somebody wrote down at the time.
There is a separate question about who is allowed to speak for you at the hearing. The Board's Practice Direction on Representation before the Landlord and Tenant Board, effective 2022-03-03, says a person not licensed by the Law Society of Ontario as a lawyer or paralegal "may not represent a party at an LTB proceeding unless that person falls within the specific licensing exemptions established by the LSO". On property managers it adds that an unlicensed one "may not be allowed to represent the landlord if they are in fact engaged in the business of providing legal services to multiple third parties and do not fall within one of the LSO exemptions". Both limbs have to be met before the door closes, so ask the question well before the hearing rather than on the day.
Where KEILTY earns its keep on a maintenance file is upstream of all of it. A request logged when it comes in, attended on a timeframe that matches how serious it is, and closed out with an invoice attached, is a file that answers a T6 by existing. That is ordinary work done consistently, and it is cheaper than an abatement and a blocked rent increase. If you own a small building and the maintenance is handled off the side of a desk, our small multi-family page sets out how we run it.
Holding a T6 and not sure what your own file says about it? 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 2026-09-10, not legal advice. Legislation, regulations and tribunal practice change. For advice on a specific property or situation, speak with a lawyer or licensed paralegal.
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