Is There Still Squatter Rights In Ontario?

I practice real estate law in both Manitoba and Ontario and if this question was asked in Manitoba, the answer is a hard no; the common law concept of squatter’s rights, or otherwise known as adverse possession has been abolished in Manitoba. For Ontario, it is actually a maybe. If a landowner can prove that they or the previous owners have had unchallenged access and control of the property to the exclusion of the legal owner for 10 years (in Ontario, the Real Property Limitation Act sets that period of time to 10 years) prior to the date of conversion (when land was still in the old Registry system in Ontario as opposed to the Land Titles system), a claim for adverse possession may still arise. Manitoba has essentially always been under the Land Titles system, so that common law principle does not apply.