Can an Ontario Landlord Check a Tenant’s Criminal Record? The Narrow Legal Answer
A criminal record is not a protected ground for housing — but it is also missing from the short list of things the rules say a landlord may screen on. Here is where the question actually sits, and why a blanket auto-reject can still be tested.
Can an Ontario landlord check, or refuse a tenant based on, a criminal record?
The honest answer is that a criminal record sits in a legal gap, so the safe framing is neither “anything goes” nor “checking is banned.” Hold three things together. First, Ontario’s Human Rights Code lists the grounds a landlord may not use when renting to you, and a criminal record is not one of them — for housing, it is simply not a protected ground. Second, a separate regulation, O. Reg. 290/98, spells out what a landlord is expressly allowed to screen on — credit history, rental history, income, a guarantor, a deposit — and a criminal-record check is not on that permitted list either. Third, because the practice falls outside both lists, a blanket rule that rejects anyone with a record is not automatically safe: if it ends up excluding a group protected on another ground, it can still be examined under the Code’s constructive-discrimination test. So the practical answer turns on how the policy is built, not on a simple yes or no.
Source: Ontario Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, ss. 2(1), 5(1), 10(1) and 11; O. Reg. 290/98 under the Code, ss. 1–2. Current to 2026-09-22 on Ontario e-Laws (ontario.ca/laws).
I’m Arthur Zhao, a Toronto real estate broker. Here is a small thing I see more often than you would think. A landlord or property manager sits down to build a tenant-screening checklist, opens a template, and there it is as a line item: criminal background check. Sometimes it was lifted, almost word for word, from a hiring or HR process. Sometimes it shows up as a question printed on the rental application itself — a box asking whether the applicant has ever been convicted of an offence.
The instinct behind it is reasonable: a landlord is handing over a key and taking on real financial risk. But renting a home and hiring an employee are governed by two different corners of the same statute, and a step that is routine in one is on much shakier ground in the other. This piece stays on one narrow question — whether an Ontario landlord can check, or rely on, a prospective tenant’s criminal record — and walks through where the law actually places it.
A Criminal Record Is Not a Protected Ground for Housing
Ontario’s Human Rights Code gives every person a right to equal treatment in the occupancy of accommodation without discrimination on a set of listed grounds. Section 2(1) names them — grounds such as race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, and receipt of public assistance. Read the list closely and you will notice what is not there: a record of offences. In the housing context, a criminal record is simply not one of the protected grounds.
That matters, but it is easy to over-read. It means a landlord who declines an applicant because of a criminal record is not, on that fact alone, discriminating on a ground the Code protects in housing. It does not mean the record can be used as a stand-in for a ground that is protected, and — as the rest of this piece shows — it does not mean a blanket policy is automatically in the clear.
ℹ️A subtle trap: even where a record is not itself protected, applying the concern selectively — raising it for some applicants and not others in a way that tracks a protected ground — turns a neutral factor into a proxy for discrimination. Consistency in how any screening question is applied is part of what keeps it defensible.
Why the Assumption Runs the Other Way in Employment
What the Rules Actually Let a Landlord Screen On
If a criminal record is not a protected ground, can a landlord screen on whatever they like? Not quite — there is a regulation that maps out the screening practices the law treats as permissible. Under O. Reg. 290/98, made under the Human Rights Code, a landlord may request a prospective tenant’s credit references and rental history, ask for authorization to run a credit check, and select or refuse a tenant on the basis of that information. Income information may be considered together with those other factors, and may be considered on its own when it is the only information the landlord obtains. The regulation also lets a landlord require a guarantee of the rent and collect a deposit within the limits the Residential Tenancies Act sets in its rent-deposit provisions (sections 105 and 106).
Run your eye down that list and one thing stands out for our question: a criminal-record check is not on it. The regulation describes a credit-and-rental-history world; it does not name criminal history as a permitted screening tool. That absence is not the same as a prohibition — but it does mean a criminal-record policy cannot point to this regulation as its authority the way a credit check can.
The Gap — Not Protected, but Not Blessed Either
Put the two pieces together and a criminal record lands in a gap. It is not a protected ground in housing, so refusing on that basis is not direct discrimination under the Code. But it is also not on the regulation’s list of expressly permitted screening practices, so it does not enjoy the clear safe harbour that a credit or rental-history check does. It sits in between.
That in-between space is where a second part of the Code becomes relevant: constructive discrimination. Section 11 says that a requirement or factor that is not itself discrimination on a protected ground can still infringe the Code if it results in the exclusion of a group identified by a protected ground — unless the requirement is reasonable and bona fide in the circumstances. And section 11 sets a high bar for that: the needs of the affected group must be ones that cannot be accommodated without undue hardship, measured by cost, outside sources of funding, and health and safety.
Why does that matter for criminal records? Because a blanket, mechanical policy — reject every applicant with any record, no exceptions — is exactly the kind of neutral-looking rule that can sweep in a group protected on another ground. If it does, the landlord may have to show the rule is reasonable and bona fide, which is a real and fact-specific test. None of this makes checking automatically unlawful, and none of it makes a blanket refusal automatically safe. It means the policy can be examined — and how it is built determines how it fares.
⚠️The riskiest design is the mechanical one: reject any applicant with any record, automatically, with no room for context. A rule applied without exceptions is the kind of neutral-looking requirement that section 11 exists to test. A criminal record treated as one context-specific factor, weighed alongside the screening the regulation does permit, sits on much firmer ground than a blanket filter.
💡 My own read: the legal exposure here attaches to the shape of the policy, not to the act of asking. A landlord who treats a record as at most one context-specific factor — and who can point to the credit, income, and rental-history screening the regulation actually permits — is in a very different position from one running a blanket auto-reject. If you are going to weigh a record at all, the defensible version is individual and reasoned, never mechanical.
Who to Ask — and the Honest Limits
A few honest limits. This is general information about how Ontario law frames the question — it is not legal advice, and it does not tell you how a specific policy or a specific refusal would be judged. Whether a particular screening rule is reasonable and bona fide, or whether a particular decision crossed a line, is a fact-specific question for a lawyer or a licensed paralegal; the Human Rights Legal Support Centre and the Ontario Human Rights Commission are the general starting points people are usually pointed to on the human-rights side.
Two more things worth flagging without over-claiming. Collecting any personal information about an applicant — a record included — also raises consent and privacy questions that are their own area of law, and worth a lawyer’s eye before you build a process around it. And timing matters: this reflects the rules as they stand in September 2026. Statutes and regulations change, so confirm the current text on Ontario e-Laws, or with counsel, before you rely on any of it.
- Ontario Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19 — s. 2(1) (equal treatment in occupancy of accommodation, protected grounds), s. 5(1) (employment, which includes record of offences), s. 10(1) (definition of “record of offences”), and s. 11 (constructive discrimination and the reasonable-and-bona-fide / undue-hardship test).
- O. Reg. 290/98 (Business Practices Permissible to Landlords in Selecting Prospective Tenants) under the Human Rights Code — ss. 1–2 (credit references, rental history, credit-check authorization, income information, rent guarantee and deposit).
- Both current to 2026-09-22 on Ontario e-Laws. This article is general information, not legal advice.
How to Legally Screen Tenants in Ontario: Credit Checks, Income, and the Human Rights Lines You Can’t Cross →Your Landlord Just Listed the Place: A Tenant’s Rights Map for Ontario →Tenant Screening Ontario →First-Time Renter Guide →
Frequently Asked Questions
Can an Ontario landlord ask about or run a check on a tenant’s criminal record?
There is no provision that expressly authorizes it the way O. Reg. 290/98 authorizes credit and rental-history checks, and there is also no provision that flatly bans asking. That leaves it in a grey zone: a criminal record is not a protected ground in housing, but a criminal-record policy is not on the regulation’s permitted list either. Because of that, how the information is used matters more than the act of asking — a blanket auto-reject can still be examined under section 11 of the Code.
Is it illegal to refuse a tenant because of a criminal record in Ontario?
Not automatically. A criminal record is not one of the protected grounds for housing under section 2(1) of the Human Rights Code, so a refusal is not direct discrimination on that basis alone. But section 11 means a blanket rule that ends up excluding a group protected on another ground can still be challenged as constructive discrimination unless it is reasonable and bona fide. Whether a specific refusal crosses that line is a fact-specific legal question.
What can a landlord legally use to screen tenants in Ontario?
O. Reg. 290/98 sets out the permitted practices: requesting credit references and rental history, asking for authorization to run a credit check, and considering income information (with those other factors, or on its own if it is all that is obtained). A landlord may also require a rent guarantee and collect a deposit within the limits of the Residential Tenancies Act. A criminal-record check is not named on that list.
I copied a screening checklist from a hiring process and it includes a criminal background check — is that a problem for rentals?
It is worth a second look. In employment, record of offences is a protected ground (section 5(1)), and even there it is defined narrowly in section 10(1) — a pardoned federal offence or a provincial offence, not every criminal record. Renting is governed by different provisions, and a step that is routine in hiring does not carry the same footing in tenant screening. Before reusing an employment template, it is worth confirming with a lawyer how the criminal-record step fits the housing rules.
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