The myth
The belief is simple: put "no pets" in the lease, and pets stay out of the unit. If a tenant brings one in anyway, the clause is your grounds to end the tenancy. It does not work that way in any province, and in Ontario it does not work at all.
Ontario: the clause is void, in one sentence of statute
Section 14 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 reads in full:
A provision in a tenancy agreement prohibiting the presence of animals in or about the residential complex is void.
One sentence. No exceptions, no carve-out for size, species or building type. Sign a lease with a no-pets clause in Ontario and you have signed a lease with a dead sentence in it.
Section 14 governs the tenancy agreement, not who you choose to sign it with. Selecting a tenant is still your decision, inside the limits of the Human Rights Code. What ends at signing is the clause, and from there the pet question runs through section 76.
What an eviction over an animal takes to prove
Section 76 sets the bar the Landlord and Tenant Board applies. The Board cannot terminate a tenancy over an animal unless the tenant is keeping one and one of three things is true:
- the past behaviour of an animal of that species has substantially interfered with the reasonable enjoyment of the complex for the landlord or other tenants;
- the presence of an animal of that species has caused the landlord or another tenant to suffer a serious allergic reaction; or
- an animal of that species or breed is inherently dangerous to the safety of the landlord or the other tenants.
Two subsections close the obvious gap: if the tenant's animal did not cause or contribute to the interference or the allergic reaction, the Board cannot evict on that ground. Arguments about what the species usually does fail unless this animal did something.
Read that as a standard of evidence: dated complaints from named neighbours, photographs of damage, a medical note, a record of what you asked the tenant to fix and when. The clause adds nothing to it, and landlords who lean on it arrive at a hearing with nothing else.
The money question: what you may collect
In Ontario, nothing extra. Section 105 says the only security deposit a landlord may collect is a rent deposit, and section 106 caps it at the lesser of one rent period and one month. Section 134 goes further and prohibits collecting a fee, premium, commission, bonus, penalty, key deposit or other like amount of money, whether or not it is refundable.
A pet deposit, a pet fee or a refundable pet cleaning charge is an unlawful charge in Ontario, and section 135 lets a tenant, former tenant or prospective tenant apply to the Board to get it back. If your standard lease package carries a pet deposit line, that is a live liability in every file.
The rest of the country is not uniform.
- British Columbia allows a pet damage deposit of no more than half of one month's rent, and only one no matter how many pets are permitted. BC landlords may limit pet size, type and number, and set reasonable rules. Certified guide and service dogs are not pets: they cannot be excluded, and no pet damage deposit may be required for them.
- Alberta caps the security deposit at one month's rent at the time the tenancy starts, and it cannot be increased during the tenancy.
The condominium trap
Section 14 voids a clause in your tenancy agreement. It does nothing to a condominium declaration. Under section 119 of the Condominium Act, 1998, an occupier must comply with the declaration, the by-laws and the rules, and the owner must take all reasonable steps to ensure they do.
So if you rent out a condo unit whose declaration restricts animals, the restriction reaches your tenant through the Condominium Act rather than your lease, and you carry responsibility for their compliance. Pull the declaration and the current rules before you advertise, put the restriction in the listing, and hand the tenant a copy at signing.
What the myth costs you before anyone applies
Pet-owning households are a large slice of the rental market, and every major portal lets renters filter for pet-friendly listings. A listing marked no pets is dropped from those results before a renter reads a word of your ad. On a single-family home or a scattered-site portfolio, where a week of vacancy is real money, that is a costly filter to fail. In Ontario you pay that price for a clause that expires at signature.
What to do instead
- Decide before you list, not at the lease. Your pet position belongs in the ad, where it filters the pool. In the lease it has no force, so it only hides the decision.
- Screen the animal the way you screen the person. Ask on the application: species, breed, adult weight, age, whether it is spayed or neutered, licensing and vaccination status, and a reference from the previous landlord. A five-year-old neutered cat is a different risk from an untrained young dog, and the clause never told them apart.
- Write behaviour rules, not prohibitions. Leash and carrier rules in common areas, waste handling, no animals left unattended on balconies, quiet hours. These describe conduct rather than banning presence, and they set the documented expectation a section 76 case is built on.
- Document condition at move-in. Damage claims are won with condition evidence, not clauses. In BC and Alberta the condition inspection report is the mechanism, and missing a step can extinguish the claim. We covered that sequence in the condition inspection playbook.
- Put the risk in the rent, not in a deposit. Ontario forbids the pet fee. It does not tell you where to set the asking rent.
- Handle service animals separately. A guide dog or a service dog is not a pet. Running one through a pet screen is how a pet policy turns into a human rights complaint.
The short version
In Ontario the clause is void and the pet deposit is unlawful, so both are pure cost. In BC and Alberta the clause holds, but it still does not prove damage or fund a repair. What protects the unit is the same everywhere: what you asked before you signed, what you recorded at move-in, and what you documented when something went wrong.
This summarizes published legislation and provincial guidance, not legal advice. Check your province's current rules before you change a lease.