Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Interpretation of “rent” as the entire monthly amount due, making any shortfall a late payment even if a partial payment is made on time.
• Treatment of persistent late payment and arrears as distinct but related grounds, both within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB).
• Rejection of the tenant’s reliance on s. 82(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act (RTA) as implying a right to withhold or self-abate rent before an LTB order.
• Confirmation that tenants cannot unilaterally grant themselves rent abatements; they must continue to pay full rent pending LTB determination of abatement or illegality of rent.
• Procedural fairness challenge to having both a persistent late payment proceeding and a separate arrears/abatement proceeding dismissed, with the court upholding the LTB’s process choices.
• Acceptance of LTB factual findings that the lawful rent was $1,446.04 due on the first of each month and that the tenant underpaid for 12 consecutive months, supporting a finding of persistent late payment.

Facts of the case
The case arises from a long-term residential tenancy between Irene Parousis (the tenant) and Centurion Property Associates Inc. (the landlord). Ms. Parousis had been a tenant in the rental unit since 2012 and historically had a good record of paying her rent on time. A rent increase was implemented by the landlord, which Ms. Parousis disputed. That rent increase was later addressed in an LTB proceeding identified as LTB-L-016714-24-IN1, in which the Board determined that the lawful monthly rent for the unit was $1,446.04, payable on the first day of each month.
Following the rent increase, Ms. Parousis adopted the position that she would pay only the prior, lower rent, on time each month while she disputed the lawfulness of the increase. As a result, for a series of months she made substantial partial payments but did not pay the full amount of the increased rent. The landlord treated the unpaid portion of each month’s rent as arrears and also as evidence of persistent late payment.
This pattern of underpayment triggered two tracks of proceedings before the LTB. One concerned arrears of rent and related abatement claims, which remained ongoing at the time of the Divisional Court appeal. The other concerned persistent late payment of rent, in which the landlord sought remedial relief to ensure that full rent would be paid on time going forward.

Proceedings before the Landlord and Tenant Board
In the persistent late payment proceeding, Member Begg of the LTB considered whether the tenant’s consistent pattern of paying less than the full lawful rent each month amounted to “persistent failure to pay rent on the date it becomes due and payable” under s. 58(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, SO 2006, c. 17 (RTA).
The tenant argued that she had not been “late” in paying rent. Her position was that she paid the “unincreased rent” on time, and that any difference between what she paid and what the landlord claimed was lawful rent should be treated only as a dispute over arrears or rent legality, not as late payment. In her view, partial timely payments meant that rent was not “late” in the sense contemplated by the persistent late payment provisions.
The LTB rejected this framing. It relied on its prior rent-determination order, which had already established that the lawful rent was $1,446.04 due on the first day of each month. Against that benchmark, it found that for 12 consecutive months the tenant had failed to pay “the amount required to be paid” on the due date. The Board also emphasized that the RTA provides a framework for lawful rent increases and that, where such an increase does not require advance LTB approval, tenants are still obligated to pay the increased rent unless and until the Board orders otherwise.
On that basis, the LTB found that the tenant had persistently failed to pay rent when due within the meaning of s. 58(1). As a remedy, the Board issued a conditional order: going forward, the tenant was required to pay the full amount of rent, in full and on time, for a 12-month period. If she defaulted during that period, the landlord could apply for an eviction order without notice to the tenant. This remedy was prospective, aimed at ensuring compliance with rent obligations in the future, and it did not itself finally determine the amount of arrears or abatement issues, which were being addressed in separate arrears proceedings.
The tenant sought a review of Member Begg’s decision. Member Quattrociocchi of the LTB denied the request for review. The LTB’s original findings and conditional order therefore remained in place.

Issues on appeal to the Divisional Court
Ms. Parousis appealed to the Divisional Court from both the original LTB decision and the refusal to review it. Her principal arguments can be grouped into three broad issues.
First, she challenged the interpretation of “rent” for purposes of persistent late payment. She submitted that “rent” should be understood as the “entire rent,” such that if she paid the prior lawful rent on time, she had not paid rent late—even if she had not paid the full increased amount that the landlord claimed. On this view, any unpaid balance would be an issue of arrears only, not late payment.
Second, she relied on s. 82(1) of the RTA, which allows tenants to raise their own claims (such as rent abatement or related complaints) as a defence in landlord applications under s. 69 for arrears and eviction. She argued that this provision effectively permits tenants to withhold or self-abate rent in appropriate circumstances and that, to give full effect to these rights, claims of persistent late payment should not proceed where there are related abatement issues; instead, everything should have to be decided in a single arrears proceeding.
Third, she contended that it was an abuse of process, or at least unfair, for tenants to face two separate LTB proceedings—one for arrears and one for persistent late payment—based on essentially the same underlying payment history. In her view, this structure forced her to defend duplicative proceedings and risked inconsistent or overly harsh outcomes.

Statutory framework and key provisions
The Divisional Court analysed several key provisions of the RTA in resolving these issues.
Section 58(1)1 authorizes a landlord to give a tenant a notice of termination where “the tenant has persistently failed to pay rent on the date it becomes due and payable.” The term “rent” is defined in s. 1 of the Act as encompassing “the amount of any consideration … required to be paid … by … a tenant to a landlord … for the right to occupy a rental unit” and related services, subject to specific exclusions not relevant here. The court focused on the words “the amount … required to be paid … for the right to occupy a rental unit.”
The court accepted the LTB’s reliance on its earlier rent determination order, in which it had fixed the lawful rent at $1,446.04 per month, due on the first day of each month. Once that order was in place, “the amount required to be paid” each month was that full sum, not the lower amount the tenant preferred to pay. Consequently, a payment that falls short of that amount is, to the extent of the shortfall, a non-payment of rent when due.
Section 82(1) RTA was also central to the tenant’s argument. It provides that, at a hearing of a landlord’s application under s. 69 for termination and eviction based on arrears or related grounds, the tenant may raise any issue that could be the subject of a tenant’s own application under the Act. While this expands what can be litigated within an arrears proceeding (by folding in rent abatement and related tenant claims), the statutory text is confined to applications under s. 69 and does not mention proceedings under s. 58(1) for persistent late payment.
Other provisions were mentioned in passing, including s. 12 (where, in some circumstances, a landlord’s failure to provide a written lease may suspend rent obligations) and s. 135 (a vehicle for challenging unlawful rent). However, lease-delivery issues were not part of the tenant’s case, and no separate policy wording or private contractual clauses beyond the standard statutory rent obligations were central to the court’s reasoning. The dispute turned on how the RTA’s statutory scheme allocates rights and obligations around rent, arrears, abatements, and late payments.

Divisional Court’s analysis and reasoning
On the definition of “rent” and late payment, the Divisional Court found there was “little merit” in the argument that the tenant had not been late so long as she made substantial partial payments on time. Any non-payment of rent is, by definition, both rent that is late and rent that is in arrears until it is paid. If arrears are later paid, the rent ceases to be in arrears but remains rent that was paid late. The court stressed that it is “a fundamental obligation of a tenant to pay rent in full when it is due.”
By tying the definition of “rent” to “the amount required to be paid” and by relying on the LTB’s earlier order fixing lawful rent at $1,446.04, the court concluded that the Board was entitled to treat each short payment as a failure to pay all of the rent when due. On that view, repeated shortfalls over 12 consecutive months amounted to persistent late payment under s. 58(1). These were fundamentally factual findings (namely, what the lawful rent was and what had actually been paid, and when), and the court held they were not open to attack on appeal absent an extricable legal error, which it did not find.
Turning to s. 82(1), the court rejected the submission that this provision implicitly authorizes tenants to withhold or self-abate rent. Section 82(1) operates only in the context of s. 69 arrears applications; it does not apply to s. 58(1) proceedings. Its purpose, as the court characterized it, is procedural efficiency: it allows tenants to bring forward their own abatement or related claims in the same proceeding as a landlord’s arrears application so that the LTB can determine “everything outstanding” about the state of accounts in a single hearing. It is not a substantive defence that permits tenants to underpay rent in advance of a Board ruling.
On the alleged unfairness of having two proceedings, the court held that the LTB is entitled to structure its processes to deal with persistent late payment and arrears separately. Both types of disputes arise under the RTA’s exclusive jurisdiction granted to the LTB, and the Act contemplates distinct though related grounds and remedies. There was no undue complexity or unfairness in requiring a tenant who had unilaterally withheld rent to pay in full and on time going forward, notwithstanding that abatement or arrears issues would be determined later in separate proceedings.
The court also discussed its earlier decision in Tataw v. Minto Developments, 2023 ONSC 4238, which the LTB had relied on in configuring the conditional order. Tataw confirms that the LTB may impose prospective compliance orders in persistent late payment cases, even where there are parallel arrears and abatement issues. The Divisional Court endorsed the LTB’s understanding and application of Tataw in this case and noted that some prior LTB decisions that treated arrears and late payment more rigidly as mutually exclusive tracks misread Tataw and should not be followed.
Consistent with Tataw, the court held that it is not procedurally unfair to require tenants to comply with full and timely rent payment obligations prospectively while their abatement or illegality claims are adjudicated. The LTB’s conditional order was limited to future behaviour and did not prejudge the tenant’s entitlement to any rent abatement or other relief in the separate arrears proceeding.

Outcome and significance
The Divisional Court ultimately dismissed the appeal. It held that the LTB had correctly interpreted “rent” as the full lawful monthly amount, properly found that the tenant had persistently failed to pay that full amount on time for 12 consecutive months, and acted within its jurisdiction and discretion in issuing a prospective conditional order requiring full and timely payment of rent for a one-year period. The court rejected the tenant’s arguments that s. 82(1) of the RTA authorized withholding, that the persistent late payment proceeding should have been barred or folded into the arrears proceeding, or that the dual-proceeding structure was an abuse of process.
The court emphasized that, although the tenant sincerely believed the landlord had failed in its obligations and had been actively pursuing abatement or related claims, the RTA did not permit her to respond by unilaterally withholding or self-abating rent. Pending a favourable determination by the LTB on those claims, she remained obliged to pay the full amount of the lawful rent on time each month.
In terms of relief, the landlord, Centurion Property Associates Inc., emerged as the successful party on the appeal. The Divisional Court dismissed Ms. Parousis’ appeal and ordered her to pay the landlord costs of $3,000, inclusive, within ninety days. Aside from this costs award, the decision did not itself fix any additional monetary amount in favour of the landlord; questions about the quantum of arrears or any rent abatement remained for resolution in the separate LTB arrears and abatement proceeding, and any further monetary amounts in those proceedings could not be determined from this appellate decision alone.