Article content

There’s a two bedroom basement apartment for rent in Toronto’s northwest end —one bathroom, newly painted and renovated with a side entrance. The ad, posted on popular classified site Kijiji.ca, comes with the typical caveats —no pets allowed, no smokers. And then, a less common request: Only Muslims need apply.

It’s the exact kind of specifications the Ontario Human Rights Commission recently warned landlords against putting in their online classified ads —any denial of a prospective tenant due to race, ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age and disability, among other things, is grounds for discrimination according to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s housing policy and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Landlords face no punishment for discrimination in online ads Back to video

But for all its condemnation of the practice, the commission this week said they can’t police these online ads, that it’s out of their hands.

Instead, a person would have to call up the prospective landlord and file a complaint if it is clear they were not considered for the apartment because they weren’t Muslim, for example, or Chinese, Korean or Japanese as one other Craigslist Vancouver ad said it would prefer the successful tenants to be.