The Act does not give you a list
The Residential Tenancies Act uses the phrase "in cases of emergency" in section 26(1)(a) and leaves it undefined. There is no schedule of qualifying emergencies. What exists instead is section 20(1): "A landlord is responsible for providing and maintaining a residential complex, including the rental units in it, in a good state of repair and fit for habitation and for complying with health, safety, housing and maintenance standards."
So the practical test is not "is this on a list". It is whether delay puts a person or the building at risk, and whether a reasonable landlord would have moved faster. Municipal property standards and fire codes sit on top of the Act and are often the sharper deadline.
The calls that are almost always emergencies
A smell of gas, any fire or smoke, or carbon monoxide. The first instruction is to leave and call 911 or the gas utility — not to open a ticket and wait.
Active water: a burst pipe, a failed water heater, sewage backing up, or water reaching electrical equipment. Every hour multiplies the remediation cost and the mould risk.
No heat in winter. Heat is a vital service, and a Toronto February makes a broken furnace a habitability problem within hours rather than days.
Electrical hazards — sparking outlets, burning smells from a panel, exposed conductors.
No water at all, or a total loss of electricity to the unit that is not a utility-wide outage.
A resident locked out at night, or a door or ground-floor window that will not lock. Security is habitability.
The calls that are urgent but not emergencies
One dripping tap, a slow drain, a fridge that is running warm, a broken buzzer, a loose railing, an appliance that has died in mild weather. These need a real date, not a truck at midnight.
The mistake that costs money is not misclassifying one of these as an emergency. It is the reverse — filing a February furnace call or a ceiling drip as routine because it arrived outside business hours.
Triage that survives a hearing
Ask the four questions a trade would ask before dispatching: what exactly is happening, where in the unit, since when, and is it getting worse. Ask for a photo. Most ambiguous calls resolve on the photo.
Record the time the report arrived, not the time you saw it. The gap between those two is the number you will be asked about.
If you enter without notice because it is an emergency, write down why at the time. Section 26(1)(a) is a defence you have to be able to evidence later, and "it felt urgent" recalled months afterwards is thin.
Tell the resident what is happening even when the answer is that a trade cannot come until morning. Most escalations to the Board are about silence, not about speed.