Because we have an inadequate setting of the rents which does not keep into account the economic reality of the owners of rental buildings, not any more than the recommendations of several experts in heating.
Several experts in heating recommend us to keep our systems running with fuel oil or natural gas. It seems that this mode of heating is preferable at the environmental level and more effective when our system is adequate.
However, during the last few years we did not see any new building adopting this mode of heating and several owners chose the conversion of their system of gas heating or of fuel oil for a system with electricity. Why?
Basically, two factors lead in an irremediable way to this phenomenon:
1) Our rent-setting system is inadequate because it does not allow for real distribution of the rise in the costs of heating to the tenants. Indeed, our rent-setting system uses an approximation based on the increase in the costs such as established by Statistics Canada. Each month of the year is taken into account equally. However, for several years, on the market the price of gas and fuel oil has fluctuated considerably from month to month. It is in particular more expensive during the winter. And it is in this period, that we, the owners see our yearly consumption in heating increase in an important way. The current method, by taking account of every month equally, disadvantages us since it is necessarily lower than our real increase in cost. The method is inadequate and must be modified.
2) Our rent-setting system is inadequate because it does not allow for the distribution of the invoice to each user according to the consumption of each of the residences. We have only one invoice which we cannot distribute to each and every one of our tenants if we heat with gas and fuel oil. Electricity is thus the only mode of heating where, currently in Quebec, we can bill the consumer. Quebec is however not the only place to use gas or fuel oil for heating. Elsewhere, one can proceed with the determination by independent experts of the distribution of the invoice according to the size and the site of the housing. It would also be possible to put meters which measure the consumption of each one of the residences and thus to distribute the invoice in this way. The current method, by not allowing the distribution of the invoice, harms the economy, contradicts the experts in heating and harms the environment.
The provisions governing this method must be modified as soon as possible to correct this situation which harms the owners, but also the whole of the citizenry.