The notice period, before and after 21 September 2026
The current section 59(1) allows a notice of termination effective no earlier than "(a) the 7th day after the notice is given, in the case of a daily or weekly tenancy; and (b) the 14th day after the notice is given, in all other cases." A month-to-month or fixed-term tenancy falls in (b), so 14 days.
e-Laws carries a note that on 21 September 2026, by order of the Lieutenant Governor in Council, subsection 59(1) is repealed and replaced with: "If a tenant fails to pay rent lawfully owing under a tenancy agreement, the landlord may give the tenant notice of termination of the tenancy effective not earlier than the 7th day after the notice is given." The distinction between weekly and monthly disappears and everything becomes 7 days.
That change comes from Schedule 12 of Bill 60, the Fighting Delays, Building Faster Act, 2025, which received Royal Assent in November 2025 and is being brought into force in stages.
Practically: an N4 served on or after 21 September 2026 can specify a termination date a week out rather than a fortnight. Do not start using the shorter period early — a notice with a termination date that does not comply is defective, and a defective N4 does not get corrected at the hearing.
What the notice has to say
Section 59(2) requires the notice to set out the amount of rent due, and to specify that the tenant may avoid termination by paying, on or before the termination date, the rent set out in the notice plus "any additional rent that has become due under the tenancy agreement as at the date of payment".
The amount has to be right. An N4 that overstates the arrears — by including a charge that is not rent, for example — is the single most common reason these applications fail.
It must be the Board's approved form. Section 43 requires a notice of termination to be in the form approved by the Board, and a letter setting out the same information is not an N4.
The two ways it stops being worth anything
Section 59(3): the notice "is void if, before the day the landlord applies to the Board for an order terminating the tenancy and evicting the tenant based on the notice, the tenant pays, (a) the rent that is in arrears under the tenancy agreement; and (b) the additional rent that would have been due... had notice of termination not been given." Payment before you file kills the notice entirely, and you would have to start again with a fresh N4.
Section 74(2) then covers the period after you file. The application must be discontinued if, before the Board issues the eviction order, the tenant has paid the arrears, the additional rent that would have come due, and the landlord's application fee. Note the fee: after filing, the tenant has to cover it to stop the application.
So the arrears are recoverable at almost every stage. An N4 is a payment mechanism far more often than it is an eviction, and treating it as the latter tends to cost more than it recovers.
Timing and records
Section 74(1) prevents applying to the Board before the day following the termination date in the notice. Filing early wastes the fee.
Keep the ledger clean before you serve. The hearing is arithmetic: what was owed, what was paid, on what date. A rent record assembled after the fact, from memory and a bank app, is where these applications come apart.
Serve the notice properly and keep proof of how and when. The termination date is counted from the day the notice is given, so the service date is load-bearing.