What Evidence You Need for a Bed Bug Claim at the LTB

A tenant complaining that a landlord has not dealt with bed bugs files Form T6, the Tenant Application about Maintenance. It is brought under section 29(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, and the remedies come from section 30.

Form T2, the Application about Tenant Rights, is a different thing. T2 is about landlord conduct, such as illegal entry or harassment. If a landlord has both failed to treat the unit and behaved in a way that independently interferes with your reasonable enjoyment, the two are often heard together. For the infestation itself, T6 is the application.

Section 29(2) says no application may be made more than one year after the conduct giving rise to it occurred. Tenants read that and assume they are out of time.

For an ongoing breach they usually are not. The Board treats a continuing breach as running until the landlord fulfils the obligation, so the one year starts when the problem is fixed rather than when it started. A tenant living with an active untreated infestation that began two years ago is not out of time. A tenant whose unit was finally treated fourteen months ago probably is.

The same one year applies to a T2, even though the T2 instructions do not spell it out.

Section 30(1) gives the Board a range of remedies. It can order an abatement of rent, order the landlord to do specified work within a specified time, order the landlord to pay a reasonable amount for the tenant's property that was damaged, destroyed or disposed of along with other reasonable out of pocket expenses, authorise work already done and order the landlord to pay for it, prohibit rent increases until the work is done, and terminate the tenancy.

There is a ceiling. Section 207(1) caps what the Board can order to the greater of ten thousand dollars and the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court. That jurisdiction rose to fifty thousand dollars on 1 October 2025, so the Board's cap rose with it. A good deal of published material still says thirty five thousand.

Abatements are fact specific. There is no standard percentage, and anyone quoting you one as a rule of thumb is guessing.

Section 30(2) requires the Board to consider whether the tenant told the landlord about the problem before applying. That single sentence decides more of these cases than any photograph. Written complaints with dates, and the landlord's replies or silence, are the backbone of a T6.

Bite photographs are weak on their own. Bites are not diagnostic, they look like several other things, and adjudicators know that. They are worth including as part of a timeline, not as proof that bed bugs were present.

Pest control invoices and reports are stronger, though they cut both ways. A landlord's exterminator reporting that nothing was found is exactly the evidence a tenant then has to answer.

What is usually missing is a dated, independent finding. That is where a canine inspection report fits: it names the handler and the certified dog, records each location where the dog alerted, includes photographs, states the areas covered and the areas that were not, and is dated. It is not a legal opinion and it does not decide anything. It is a record made by someone with no stake in the outcome.

Put every complaint in writing, even if you also phone. Email and text both work and both timestamp themselves.

Keep a plain dated log of what happened and when. Adjudicators work from chronologies.

Photograph the unit, not just your skin. Mattress seams, headboards, baseboards and furniture joints are where evidence lives.

Keep receipts for anything you replaced or discarded, because section 30(1) allows compensation for property and out of pocket expenses.

Expect it to take time. A T6 sits in the Board's general application stream, and hearings have been running in the range of five to seven months from filing. Hearings are held virtually by default.

This is general information about how the process works, current as of August 2026. It is not legal advice, and forms, fees and timelines change. The Board updated forms and processes in 2026, so download the current version of any form directly from Tribunals Ontario rather than reusing a saved copy.

If your case matters to you, speak to a licensed paralegal, a lawyer, or your local community legal clinic. Clinics represent tenants at no cost for people who qualify financially.