Notice Law - Non-Payment of Rent (N4)

Residential Tenancies Act, 2006

106 (1) A landlord may require a tenant to pay a rent deposit with respect to a tenancy if the landlord does so on or before entering into the tenancy agreement.

(2) The amount of a rent deposit shall not be more than the lesser of the amount of rent for one rent period and the amount of rent for one month.

(6) A landlord of a rental unit shall pay interest to the tenant annually on the amount of the rent deposit at a rate equal to the guideline determined under section 120 that is in effect at the time payment becomes due.

(9) Where the landlord has failed to make the payment required by subsection (6) when it comes due, the tenant may deduct the amount of the payment from a subsequent rent payment.

CEL-06197-10 (Re), 2011 CanLII 5921 (ON LTB)

1. At the time the N4 was filed, it was defective as the rental arrears claimed for March 2010 were paid. The application for termination could not proceed as the N4 notice on which it was based was void. Therefore the Landlord’s application is dismissed.

2. Irrespective of the fact that the Tenant may have incurred new arrears by the date of the Landlord’s application filed on August 3, 2010, (namely that the Tenant owed rent for August 2010), and arguably she incurred further rental arrears after that date, because the N4 is fatally defective, the Board cannot terminate under this application. The Landlord did not seek to amend the application to pursue arrears only. Accordingly such arrears claims cannot be adjudicated by means of this application.

3. Rule 1.4 of the Landlord and Tenant Board’s Rules of Practice and case law concerning the notice provisions in the Act uphold a strict interpretation for any problems found in an N4 Notice. Rule 1.4 does not allow a member to disregard any defect in a document created before the application is filed.

TSL-85025-17 (Re), 2018 CanLII 42621 (ON LTB)

2. The Landlord requested to amend the application to correct the name of the corporation in the style of cause. The Tenants did not dispute that the Landlord was incorrectly named in the application and in the notice of termination but they argued that the incorrectly named landlord rendered the notice of termination void. However, as I explained at the hearing, section 43 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 the “Act”), which sets out the essential elements of a notice of termination, does not specifically state that a landlord must be correctly named in a notice. Therefore, I find that the landlord’s failure to name itself correctly in the notice does not render it defective and void.

3. The Tenants also raised the recent amendment to section 48 of the Act, which prevents a corporation from filing a landlord’s own use application. However, that amendment came into effect on May 30, 2017, several months after the Landlord’s application was filed and it does not apply to this application. In the present case, the Landlord corporation owns the residential complex. It filed an application seeking vacant possession of the rental unit so the son of the sole owner of the corporation can move into the unit. I am satisfied that the individual owner, CB, is the directing mind of the corporation. As such, I am satisfied that CB meets the definition of “landlord” in the Act because he is also an owner of the rental unit. Accordingly, CB will be referred to as the Landlord in the remainder of this order. This approach is consistent with the court’s decision in Slapsys (1406393 Ontario Inc.) v. Abrams, 2010 ONCA 676 (CanLII).

Nejad v Preddie, 2016 ONSC 4348 (CanLII)

[40] In Ball v. Metro Capital Property, [2002] O.J. No. 5931 (Div. Ct.), the tenant appealed an order terminating a tenancy under the Tenant Protection Act, 1997, S.O. 1997, c. 24 following service of a Notice to Terminate a Tenancy Early in Form N5 under that Act. As with the N4 here, the Tenant Protection Act required that the notice set out the grounds for termination. The Court found that the notice was seriously deficient in that it failed to provide details about the reason for notice, was void as a result, and that the Member had no jurisdiction to make the order requested.

CEL-59665-16-RV (Re), 2016 CanLII 88119 (ON LTB)

15. In some situations, the actual address a person resides at is not an address where mail is reliably delivered. For example, a rural address may not have mail delivery and a P.O. Box in the closest town will be the mailing address. In that situation, a landlord would never be able to comply with the narrow interpretation of section12.

16. As long as the Landlord provided an address for service of documents the requirement of section12 has been met. The address does not have to be the personal address where the Landlord resides.

17. This reasoning was adopted by the Ontario Divisional Court in N v P, 2016 ONSC 4348 (CanLII). The Court determined that providing the address of the landlord’s lawyer for service of documents met the requirements of section12 of the Act.

18. Since the Landlord provided an address for service of documents in the written tenancy agreement, the Tenants’ obligation to pay rent was not suspended and the finding that the N4 notice was not permitted was a serious error.