“From Doctors to Landlords: How Ontario Keeps Outsourcing Responsibility and Fails Its People”

Written by OpenAI with my prompts on Bill 10: Protect Ontario Through Safer Streets and Stronger Communities Act, 2025

There’s a familiar pattern playing out in Ontario. It's slick, it’s quiet, and on paper it looks like action. But in practice? It’s a bureaucratic game of buck-passing—and it’s costing real people their safety, their dignity, and in many cases, their lives.

First, it was doctors.

When medical cannabis first became legal, hopeful patients were told they could access it if their doctor approved. Sounds reasonable—until you realize most doctors had no training, no interest, and no support to prescribe or even refer. Patients with chronic pain, PTSD, epilepsy, or cancer were met with blank stares, judgement, or flat-out refusals. These same doctors, many of whom were happy to hand out opioids like candy, suddenly clutched their pearls at the idea of prescribing a plant.

And so, cannabis patients were trapped—legal in theory, criminalized in practice. Doctors had become the gatekeepers of a system they didn’t understand.

Now, it’s landlords.

With the recent passing of Ontario’s Bill 10, landlords are being handed a new role: detectives and enforcers in the fight against illegal drug activity. Under Schedule 8 of the bill, they’re now legally responsible for identifying and reporting tenants who are producing, trafficking, or even just storing proceeds from illicit substances.

Let’s break this down.

Most landlords don’t live in the buildings they own. Many hire property managers or maintenance staff—and increasingly, those staff are overworked newcomers or contract workers with little context on what "risky behavior" looks like. Combine that with language barriers, lack of training, and the ever-present fear of getting sued, and you’ve got a perfect storm of inaction.

Yet the government now expects these same people to intervene in complex, high-risk drug activity? To report and remove potentially dangerous tenants based on vague standards like "knowingly permitting"?

This isn’t just bad policy. It’s calculated deflection.

What’s Really Going On

What we’re witnessing is the slow creep of policy-based neglect—where governments shuffle real problems off their desk and into the hands of private actors who can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t bear the burden.

• Want legal cannabis? Ask your uninformed, disinterested doctor.

• Want safer housing? Hope your absentee & profit-driven landlord suddenly cares.

• Want your neighborhood protected? Cross your fingers someone else files the report.

It’s all illusion. A quick-sand policy model dressed up as reform.

And the consequences are getting harder to ignore. Vulnerable Ontarians—whether tenants, patients, or unhoused individuals—are slipping through the cracks. Not because there’s no solution, but because the system refuses to own the problem.

The Bigger Risk

Here’s the dark underbelly: policies like Bill 10 can easily be weaponized to displace certain tenants under the guise of "safety." Once again, this isn’t about healing or helping—this is about clearing the decks. And if you think newcomers or so-called “quality tenants” aren’t being prioritized behind the scenes, you’re not paying attention.

While one group gets shuffled into safe, state-supported housing, another gets pushed into tents, ravines, and forgotten spaces, carrying with them the very desperation and addiction Bill 10 claims to solve.

Conclusion: A Call for Real Reform

Enough with the gatekeepers. Enough with the performative policy.

• If the government wants to deal with illegal drug activity, then fund trained, neutral housing inspectors and addiction specialists.

• If it wants to support safe communities, then stop pushing enforcement onto landlords and invest in public health, mental health, and restorative housing models.

• And if it wants to regain the trust of its citizens? Stop writing bills that punish the powerless while letting the powerful off the hook.

• Eliminate Ontario's 90 Day Rule whereby a housing tenant can abandon their unit for 90 consecutive days without losing tenancy. This too seems to be a purposely useless rule with no tracking ability to know when that 90 days term is up. I've been reporting to my Landlord for years about a 2 bedroom housing unit that is empty of humans but full of storage. The rent is paid each month so nobody cares. The long term tenant lives in a house a street over. My MPP's secretary confirmed the same individual is, on paper, housed there. Since 2019, I surmise that this Landlord has collected about $50k from the non-profit Housing Corporation for this empty unit. One would think that in a time of housing insecurity, more Politicians and Councilors would care but they haven't cared enough about this instance to do anything about it. I've written about it in the local newspaper twice to no avail. Is this a funnel or a compassionate housing program?
  In the eyes of Bill 10, this unit should at least be under scrutiny for the possibility of storage of illegal substances for the purpose of distribution.
  
  

Don’t let quiet policies do loud damage.

Contact your MPP & Municipal Councilor. Demand real solutions: real & currently studied addiction support, housing reform to limit skyrocketing rental rates, and accountability for slumlords—not scapegoating the same people already drowning.

They can't ignore us all.