Your Tenant Installed a Video Doorbell That Films the Shared Hallway: Where an Ontario Landlord Can Step In

The tenant wants to stop parcel theft. The neighbour across the hall ends up on camera. The answer depends less on the device than on what it is doing: filming, listening, or bolted to your door frame.

I’m Arthur Zhao, a Toronto real estate Broker. Picture the message: a tenant writes that a parcel disappeared from outside their door, so they have put up a video doorbell, and they want to know if that is okay. It is a fair question from someone trying to protect their own deliveries. It is also the moment where your reply shapes everything that follows, because the lens on that doorbell does not stop at the tenant’s doormat. Depending on the angle, it can take in the hallway, the stairs, and the door of the unit next to it.

So before you answer “sure” or “take it down,” it helps to know that Ontario law does not treat “a camera” as one thing. The Residential Tenancies Act never mentions cameras or doorbells at all. What matters is what the device does: whether it records video of a shared space, whether it records sound, and how it is attached to a door you own. Each of those lands under a different statute, and only one of them gives you, the landlord, a direct tool.

Start with the video: a federal privacy law with a personal-use limit

The federal privacy statute in the picture is the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Its scope section is short. According to the Justice Laws Website (2026), Part 1 applies, under s.4(1)(a), to every organization in respect of personal information it collects, uses or discloses in the course of commercial activities. Under s.4(2)(b), it does not apply to “any individual in respect of personal information that the individual collects, uses or discloses for personal or domestic purposes and does not collect, use or disclose for any other purpose.”

Read together, those two provisions mean that if a tenant is watching their own front door only to protect their own parcels, that reads as a personal or domestic purpose, which would put it outside PIPEDA. The limit carries a condition in its last words: and does not collect, use or disclose for any other purpose. Whether a particular use of footage stays inside that condition is a fact question the statute leaves open, and it is not something I would decide for a tenant or a landlord without a lawyer looking at the specifics.

Two things follow for you as the landlord. First, PIPEDA’s personal-use limit is a statement about where that Act stops, not a ruling that the filming is fine for everyone else in the hallway. Second, the analysis can change if you install the camera. If you put up a building camera as the landlord running a rental, the commercial-activities wording in s.4(1)(a) is the provision to think about, and whether it applies is a question for a privacy lawyer. Swapping the tenant’s device for your own is a different question, not an easier one.

Then the audio: what the Criminal Code actually says

If the doorbell also records sound, a different statute comes in entirely. Criminal Code s.184(1) provides that every person who, by means of any electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical or other device, knowingly intercepts a private communication is guilty of an indictable offence (imprisonment for a term of not more than five years) or an offence punishable on summary conviction.

Two definitions in s.183 do the work. To intercept “includes listen to, record or acquire a communication.” A private communication is an oral communication or telecommunication made “under circumstances in which it is reasonable for the originator to expect that it will not be intercepted by any person other than the person intended by the originator to receive it.” Then s.184(2)(a) carves out a person who has the consent, express or implied, of the originator or of the intended recipient.

Put the hallway into those words and you get conditions, not an answer. If a doorbell records the tenant’s own conversation with a courier, the tenant is a party to it, which is the situation s.184(2)(a) addresses. If it records two neighbours talking to each other outside their own door, the question becomes whether they could reasonably expect not to be intercepted there. The Code does not say whether a shared apartment corridor is such a place, and I am not going to say it for the Code. What a landlord can say, without deciding anything criminal, is that turning the microphone off removes this whole question from the table.

Video only vs. video with audio

The bracket and the screws: installation rules in the RTA

The RTA has no section dealing with tenant alterations or drilling as such. The physical side of a doorbell camera comes down to two provisions and your lease.

RTA s.34 makes the tenant responsible for repairing undue damage to the rental unit or residential complex caused by the wilful or negligent conduct of the tenant, another occupant, or a person the tenant let in. The Act does not define where screw holes in a door frame fall on the “undue” scale, so whether a removal leaves undue damage depends on what is actually left behind.

RTA s.35(1) is narrow. It says a tenant shall not alter the locking system on a door giving entry to a rental unit or residential complex without the landlord’s consent. A doorbell that only rings and records is not a lock on its face. If the tenant’s device is part of a smart lock, or replaced the deadbolt, s.35 would be in play. In that case s.35(2) lets the landlord apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board, and under s.35(3) the Board may order the tenant to provide keys or pay the reasonable out-of-pocket cost of changing the locking system.

Your lease may also say something about fixtures or alterations. Under RTA s.4(1), a lease term inconsistent with the Act or the regulations is void, so a lease clause is a starting point for the conversation, not a shortcut around the RTA’s own termination rules.

The landlord’s RTA tool: s.64 and the N5

When a neighbour is affected, the provision that speaks to it is RTA s.64(1). A landlord may give notice of termination if the conduct of the tenant, another occupant, or a person the tenant permitted in the complex substantially interferes with the reasonable enjoyment of the residential complex by the landlord or another tenant, or substantially interferes with another lawful right, privilege or interest of the landlord or another tenant. According to Tribunals Ontario (2026), the Landlord and Tenant Board form for this is the N5, listed as “Notice to End your Tenancy for Interfering with Others, Damage or Overcrowding.”

Note the threshold word: substantially. A camera existing is not the test. Whether a particular doorbell, at a particular angle, with or without audio, substantially interferes with the tenant next door is the question the Board would be weighing, on the facts in front of it.

Two more points sit around s.64. RTA s.22 is about the landlord’s own duty not to substantially interfere with a tenant’s reasonable enjoyment. Whether that duty also obliges you to act when one tenant affects another is not written into the section, so if a neighbour argues you must step in, that is an argument about how s.22 applies, not something the text spells out. And if you live in the building yourself and it has no more than three residential units, s.65 gives a separate notice with a termination date not earlier than the 10th day, limited to interference with the landlord’s own enjoyment or rights; under s.65(3), the 7-day correction rule in s.64(2) and (3) does not apply to that notice.

If the unit is a condo, there is a second rulebook

In a condominium, if the corridor outside the unit door is part of the common elements (your declaration says where the units end), the board, not you, writes the rules for it. Under Condominium Act s.58(1), the board may make rules respecting the use of units and common elements to promote the safety, security or welfare of owners and property, or to prevent unreasonable interference with the use and enjoyment of units and common elements; s.58(2) requires those rules to be reasonable and consistent with the Act, the declaration and the by-laws. So check whether your corporation already has a rule on doorbells or cameras before you reply to the tenant.

Under s.119(1), an occupier of a unit, which includes your tenant, must comply with the Act, the declaration, the by-laws and the rules. Under s.119(2), you as the owner must take all reasonable steps to ensure your occupier complies. Under s.119(3), the corporation has the right to require anyone who must comply to do so, which reaches both your tenant and you as the owner.

Mounting is a separate condo question. If your declaration places the door frame or corridor wall in the common elements, an owner’s addition or alteration to common elements goes through s.98(1), which requires a board resolution approving it and an agreement between the owner and the corporation covering cost and responsibilities. Whether a doorbell bracket counts as such an alteration depends on your declaration and the corporation’s view, so ask management before the drill comes out.

What to do, in the order it comes up