Moving an Existing Ontario Tenant onto a Suite Meter: The Four Documents a Landlord Needs Before Hydro Changes Hands

The meter on the wall changes nothing on its own. What ends your duty to pay for a tenant’s electricity is paper — and the lease you already have is the one document the Act sets aside.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a Toronto real estate broker. Picture a landlord who has just had a suite meter put in, pulls out the tenant’s lease, and finds a line that seems to settle everything: “Tenant agrees to pay hydro once meters are installed.” Signed, initialled, years old. It feels like the tenant already said yes. Under Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act, that line is the first document to set aside, not the one to rely on. What actually moves the electricity bill from you to the tenant is a short stack of other documents, each with its own contents and its own timing set by regulation. This piece walks through that stack in the order a landlord would assemble it — and then what the Landlord and Tenant Board can do if one of the pages is missing.

Document one: the lease you already signed

Start with why the lease matters at all. The conversion rules in s.137(3) apply to “a landlord who has the obligation under a tenancy agreement to supply electricity.” So the lease is where your obligation comes from — and, under the Act, it is not where your way out comes from.

The pre-agreed clause is void. Section 137(18) provides that a provision in a tenancy agreement which “purports to provide that a tenant has consented or will consent” to ending the landlord’s electricity obligation on a future date — or which is otherwise inconsistent with s.137 — is void. The line “tenant agrees to pay hydro once meters are installed” is exactly that kind of promise about the future. Whatever the tenant initialled, the consent the Act counts is the one given later, in the Board-approved form, after the tenant has seen the information package.

Older leases may sit under an older version of the section. Section 137(19) says that s.137 and its related regulations, as they read immediately before the day the Protecting Tenants and Strengthening Community Housing Act, 2020 received Royal Assent, continue to apply to tenancy agreements entered into before that day. If the lease predates that Act, the version of the rules that governs it is a question worth checking with a lawyer or paralegal before you rely on anything in this article — this piece describes the section as it reads now.

Some complexes are outside the rent-reduction piece entirely. Section 19 of O. Reg. 394/10 switches off the rent-reduction requirement for certain units — for example federally owned or operated complexes, designated housing projects under the Housing Services Act, 2011, and certain non-profit housing. The list is aimed at government, social and non-profit housing; if your unit falls into one of those categories, the rent-reduction part of this analysis does not apply to you in the same way.

Document two: the information package — before consent, in writing

Section 137(4) is a sequencing rule: you cannot end your electricity obligation unless, before obtaining the tenant’s written consent, you gave the tenant the prescribed information. Section 5 of O. Reg. 394/10 lists it. Build the package as a checklist:

• A written statement that the tenant is not required to consent (s.5(2)). This is the line landlords are tempted to soften; the regulation requires it in writing.
• The amount of the rent reduction and how it is calculated (s.5(3)) — which means Document three has to be finished before Document two can go out.
• About the distributor or suite meter provider (s.5(4)): contact information; a statement that it may require a security deposit from the tenant, and its deposit policy if one may be required; the types of fees it will charge and the amounts (or how they are calculated); when those fees may increase; any planned increases; and a statement that it may shut off the supply if an amount the tenant owes is overdue.
• On request, a copy of your agreement (if any) with the distributor or suite meter provider (s.5(5)).
• Contact information for the Ontario Energy Board, with a written statement that the tenant can contact the OEB about a dispute with the distributor or suite meter provider (s.5(6)).
• If you supply the refrigerator: the best information available to you about its date of manufacture, and any available information about its energy efficiency (s.5(7)).

One detail that ties the package to the numbers: both rent-reduction methods look back over the most recent 12-month period for which information is available before the date the s.5(3) reduction information is given to the tenant. The day you hand over the package fixes the window your calculation uses.

Document three: choosing the rent-reduction method

Reading the calculation sheet line by line

What “electricity consumption cost” means. The starting figure is the amount on the distributor’s or suite meter provider’s invoice under the heading Your Electricity Charges and the subheading “Electricity” (s.4(1)–(2)). If there is no invoice for the unit, it is the amount determined from information obtained from the distributor or suite meter provider.

What the add-ons include and exclude. “Additional charges and taxes” covers delivery, regulatory charges, debt retirement charges, billing and other administrative charges, and all applicable taxes — but excludes one-time setup fees and late-payment penalties or charges (s.4(1)).

One building, one method. If you convert more than one unit in the same residential complex, each unit’s minimum reduction must use the same method (s.4(3), para. 4). There is a single permitted switch: a landlord who has used the whole-building method may move to the unit-history method for a later unit, but once the unit-history method is used for any unit in the complex, it must be used for every later unit there (para. 5). Break either rule and the reduction for that unit is whichever method produces the greatest reduction for the tenant (para. 6).

When the reduction starts. The rent must be reduced on the first day of a rental period that begins no later than the day your electricity obligation ends (s.4(3), para. 1).

No second pass. Section 137(6) of the Act lets a tenant ask for the reduction to be adjusted only “within the prescribed time and in the prescribed circumstances,” and s.7 of the regulation prescribes no circumstances. The practical consequence for a landlord: the number on this sheet is the number, so it is worth getting right the first time.

If the unit is heated by electricity

Section 137(5) limits conversion where the primary source of heat in the unit is electricity. Section 6 of O. Reg. 394/10 allows it only if both conditions hold: the electricity for heat is not connected to the meter that measures the unit’s other electricity use, and the landlord does not end the obligation to supply electric heat. In that case the calculation sheet uses a third formula, s.4(7), which strips the heating portion out of the 12-month cost and consumption figures before adding charges and dividing by rental periods.

Document four: the consent form and the two notices

The consent. Section 137(3)(a) requires the tenant’s written consent in the form approved by the Board. It comes after Document two, not before, and it is separate from the lease.

Notice for the installation itself (if the power goes off). Section 137(2) lets a landlord who supplies electricity interrupt it to install a suite meter only if the suite meter is installed by a suite meter provider, the interruption lasts only the minimum time needed, and the tenant gets proper notice. Under s.2 of the regulation, that notice must be in writing, given at least 24 hours ahead, state a date and a time between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., and describe how long the interruption is expected to last.

Notice that your obligation is ending. Under s.3 of the regulation, written notice must be given at least 30 days before your obligation to supply electricity ends, and it must state the date it ends. The rent reduction takes effect on the first day of a rental period beginning no later than that date.

What changes afterwards. Once the tenant pays for electricity through the meter, amounts paid for that supply are not part of “rent” under s.2(1) (s.137(16)). Section 137(17) also deems electricity not to be a vital service under s.21, and interference with supply not to be interference with reasonable enjoyment, when a landlord, landlord’s agent or suite meter provider is enforcing rights or obligations under s.137 or s.31 of the Electricity Act, 1998. That provision is narrow and conditional; it is not a general licence to cut power, and should not be read as one.

Obligations that outlast the switch

Converting a unit brings new duties, not just fewer bills. Under s.137(9) and s.10 of O. Reg. 394/10, if you supply the refrigerator in a converted unit, it must have been manufactured on or after January 1, 1994; if you replace it, the replacement must have been manufactured on or after December 31, 2002. These are continuing obligations, and — as the next section shows — they are not subject to the one-year limit that applies to the conversion itself.

When a page is missing: what the Landlord and Tenant Board can do

A tenant or a former tenant may apply to the Board for an order determining whether the landlord breached s.137 (s.137(11)). The remedies depend on which subsection was breached:

• Installation interruption, the rent-adjustment rule, or the efficiency duties — ss.137(2), (6), (9), (10): the Board may order an abatement of rent, authorize or order repairs or replacements, order that the rent be reduced by a specified amount with a rebate, or make any other order it considers appropriate (s.137(12)).
• The conversion itself — consent, notice and rent reduction under s.137(3), the information package under (4), the electric-heat limit under (5): all of the above, and in addition the Board may terminate the tenancy, or order the landlord to take back the obligation to supply electricity and set the new rent (s.137(13)). If it terminates the tenancy, it may order eviction effective no earlier than the termination date (s.137(14)).

The time limit. Under s.12 of O. Reg. 394/10, an application about a breach of s.137(2), (3), (4) or (5) must be made within one year after the alleged breach first occurred. For breaches of s.137(9) or (10) — the conservation and efficiency duties — there is no such restriction.