The members of the Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ) are representative of the residential rental market in Quebec. We have owners of large properties, but also many small property owners.
This peculiarity of our situation also makes up its wealth: we have beautiful large buildings with comprehensive services that often accompany these types of buildings and we also have many small owners who have one, two or three units for rent. The impact of one month without payment for one of these owners is often important because they also have financial obligations to meet with their financial institution and repairs to make in their dwellings.
The owners must already cope with an exorbitant legal system of common law. The tenant is protected by a host of legal provisions favoring his retention in the premises. The rent is controlled in too strict a way to allow the market to develop normally.
Delays which are already too long: the adventure of the owner taking a bad turn
For an owner who must live a situation of non-payment of rent the situation is already difficult, because the bank does not wait. Cities and suppliers do not wait either. But the owner, he must wait. Already, he will have to wait three weeks to submit to the Régie du logement a request for termination of the lease for non-payment of the rent (Section 1971 of the Civil Code of Quebec) which is one of the most common requests to terminate. He will then have to wait to receive notice of the hearing before the Régie du logement, often for six weeks. Will the tenant be there, or will we have to return to the Régie du logement for a request for revocation on the grounds that something unforeseen prevented him from coming? In the best of worlds, the hearing will take place as scheduled. However, the tenant will be able to avoid termination of the lease by paying the amount due for principal, interest and costs before the decision is rendered, be it on the day of the hearing or after.
About two weeks later, the owner receives the decision. Is it over now? Well, no, although the owners would like to think so, with respect, we must still take counsel or bailiff to enforce the decision. While the bank account is already receding because of the expenses and suffering from having no rent coming in, it will take a check. Including the issuance of a writ of eviction, the bailiff and perhaps the lawyer as well as the mover at our expense if the tenant does not leave, the bill, if we are lucky, will be close to a whopping $1000.00.
An owner has therefore often lost three months’ time and rent in the process, in addition to the costs, which represents already a loss that the Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ) considers to be unacceptable. Is the adventure over now? Not really, because one now has to wonder in what state the evicted tenant has left his housing. Now we have to re-rent, often off-season, it will remain empty for several months before finding a taker, especially in areas where the vacancy rate is more critical.
Rights you say?
The owners have rights. That is true. We now have a decision from the Régie du logement. The tenant has finally left, we should now try to recover the sums lost and this operation is far from being obvious. We must obviously find our former tenant again so that he can be brought to justice, which happens only too little. Other costs are on the horizon and certainly an end which may be characterized by frustration and disappointment.
Section 692 - long and expensive
An owner must open his file as quickly as possible to minimize his losses. It is all a matter of time. How is minimizing one’s damage possible in such a context where a simple process of lease termination and eviction could now take 6 to 8 months, knowing very well that in some cases it is impossible to recover debts? There are already significant losses for the owners.
Presently, the Act provides, in section 565 of the Code of Civil Procedure, that the writ of eviction must be preceded by a notice of at least two clear juridical days.
Section 692 of Bill 28, An Act to enact the new Code of Civil Procedure:
“692. If the party ordered to deliver or surrender property fails to do so within the time set by the judgment ordering the eviction of the debtor or the removal of property or by a subsequent agreement between the parties, the judgment creditor may be placed in possession of the property by the notice of execution.
If it involves eviction, the notice must be served at least five days before it is to be executed. It orders the debtor to remove all movable property within a specified time limit or pay the costs incurred for its removal.
However, if the notice concerns the debtor’s family residence, it must be
served at least 30 days beforehand. On the debtor’s request, the court may extend the notice period by not more than three months if eviction would cause the debtor serious prejudice. The notice period cannot be extended beyond the term of a lease, however.
No eviction may be carried out between 20 December and 10 January.”
We are very much concerned about the message that this measure sends to both owners and tenants, a message that suggests that the obligations of the tenant should be taken lightly. This message which will, undoubtedly, attract the attention of some tenants who will try to take even more advantage of the situation and which will directly discourage the owner of the building and the investor to prosecute or to begin holding a rental property in Quebec. Tenants who will expect an enforced eviction generally know that the owner will not be able to claim these costs from them, nor the loss of rent while he remains in the unit without paying.
A notice of five days in isolation does not make anyone blink, but when added to the verbal notices, to a letter, to a request to the Régie, to the hearing before the Régie du logement, upon receipt of the decision rendered by the Régie du logement, to the expiration of the deadline of 10 days or 30 days before the decision becomes binding, it is different!
In addition, when it concerns a family residence, which is the case with many of our dwellings, the 30-day notice is added to the 30-day delay already granted to the tenant for appealing the decision rendered by the Régie du logement. This only exacerbates the imbalance between the obligations of the landlord and the protections granted to the tenant.
The mere fact that the tenant can then extend the debate by making a request to extend the time limit is, according to the Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ), inadmissible. Not to mention the congestion of the Courthouses, the mere fact that the owner must again take time off from work to attend Court is in itself unacceptable.
Moreover, this request for an extension of three months maximum will not be made on the benches of the Régie du logement. Providing a broad decision-making power to a Court other than the Régie du logement concerning the deadlines of execution of their own decisions will diminish the importance of assessing the damage suffered by the owner that the judge must take into account when making a decision on the execution time. The Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ) believes that this power will make this appreciation almost useless knowing that it could be modified in several ways by the Court of Québec. The Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ) also has questions about the waiting time for a decision to extend the time for execution of the judgment.
“No extension may be given beyond the term of the lease, if any.”
The Association of Quebec Landlords (APQ) has questions about the application of such a statement, since the residential lease renews itself automatically and only the tenant can terminate this extension by a notice of non-renewal. We calculate that all these amendments ensure that a tenant could stay without paying a cent in a dwelling for nearly a year for a request for termination for non-payment, while at the beginning, it concerns, at the Régie du logement, one of the causes in which the delay is the shortest due to its priority. We believe that there is a lack of congruence between what the Régie is trying to apply and this provision of the