Montreal, December 13th, 2022 --- The Association des Propriétaires du Québec (APQ) is once again protesting against the Regroupement des comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ) which publishes reports that create even more tensions in the Québec rental market.
The RCLALQ uses a small number of tenants who have come to ask for information in order to generalize a situation that does not exist very much in Québec, because the majority of rental housing owners are small, honest owners who take to heart their role of providing shelter for more than 1,300,000 tenants.
It would be good to remember that repossession or eviction are very limited and, depending on the reason, it is up to the tenants to decide, which seems to us to be one of the most protectionist rights in North America.
Repossession of a housing: Who must go to the TAL to win their case?
Every year, tenants’ associations talk about repossession of a housing as a reprehensible act, as if it were shameful to want to use one’s property for housing.
However, in a context of repossession of a housing, tenants have the big end of the stick because they can decide to stay, even if the landlord justifies the reason for the repossession. The tenants decide to stay and it is up to the landlord to fight before the Administrative Housing Tribunal (TAL) to assert their rights and, in the majority of cases, pay the tenant a relocation indemnity.
And the figures published last week confirm that owners are increasingly challenged and refused when they want to repossess their property, even though it is one of their fundamental rights.
| Year | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 |
| Repossession of housing | 1061 | 1484 | 1970 | 2540 |
Each year, more rental property owners have to demonstrate their good faith to the TAL to repossess their housing!
Stress, deadlines, justifications... This is the complex procedure that an owner must engage in in order to be able to repossess his housing, which is an essential component of the right to property.
Owning a building is like cultivating your vegetable garden: you prepare it, you sow it, you maintain it and you weed it... But unlike your vegetable garden, when you want to harvest your hard work, a wall rises: you have to ask permission to pick and eat your vegetables! With the possibility of a refusal that prevents you from eating your vegetables or even a tax to pay to access them!
“No, the rental world does not grow vegetables, but who would agree to cultivate a vegetable garden under these conditions? So why do rental property owners have such conditions to meet?” concludes the APQ.
The Association des Propriétaires du Québec (APQ) maintains that tenants have too many protections, particularly with regard to requests for repossession of a housing: the law encroaches definitely on the ownership of the building.
To conclude, tenants are informed of all their rights by tenant associations and cities that multiply messages encouraging them to refuse any request from their landlord. Tenants need only to refuse a repossession if they think the demand is misleading.
But for all these good landlords, who only want to live in their property, the APQ asks the tenants not to refuse without reason, and to communicate first and foremost to try to resolve the situation without recourse to the Administrative Housing Tribunal.
Transparency and good faith must be reciprocal and inspire good relations between landlords and tenants.