No surprise here – landlords routinely ignore the clause in their leases that report the previous rent so they can hike rents between tenants, and the government isn’t interested in making them reveal it.
Updates from January, 2025 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
Justin Trudeau has announced he won’t be running for office again in Papineau riding. Did anyone even expect he’d want to return as an ordinary member of Parliament?
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Kate
A little off topic focus, but Andrew Chang’s CBC explainer why the U.S. is not subsidizing Canada as Donald Trump continues to maintain, is a good clarifier of the position.
Also, enjoy the CBC while you can. We won’t always have it.
Margaret
I went to an NFB screening last night as I fear for their future as well.
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Kate
Temperatures should remain moderate till the weekend, then a high of -3° on Sunday will plunge overnight and give us highs like -17° to start the week.La Presse even shows us a graph.
The Journal says it’s going to be the first real cold snap in two years.
Is it not fitting that this happens on the day of the enthronement of Donald Trump?
Nicholas
Well, the highs will remain moderate; the low tonight is -14, which is why Hydro-Quebec put out a peak demand notification for tomorrow morning.
Kate
I got the same demand. I tell myself it builds character to have no heat on, when the outside temperature is -14°.
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Kate
Mayor Plante has quite a list of priorities for her final year in office: cleaner streets, reduction of speed limits near schools, hunting down illegal AirBnBs, developing new neighbourhoods, protecting affordable housing, better management of construction sites…
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Kate
Another Andy Riga piece on the OQLF and its new requirement that a French greeting be spontaneous.
jeather
I’m still not clear what Bonjour-hi means here. Spontaneous means “customer asks a question in French, store employee replies in French” (which feels very much not spontaneous), and prompted is “Service is initially offered in a language other than French but is subsequently provided in French when the observer continues speaking French or explicitly requests service in that language.” so . . . if I am in a store and someone Bonjour-hi’s me and I speak in French, it’s spontaneous if they switch to French and prompted if they reply in English, I continue in French/ask for French, and then they switch?
That actually seems more or less sensible as a definition because it completely excludes the greeting.
Ian
I just love that we actually have a bonjour-hi secret police, complete with byzantine methods of evaluation within which you are guilty no matter what.
CE
Something about this series of stories rubs me the wrong way. It’s being presented as this big in-depth investigation that needs an entire week to lay it all out. This isn’t investigative journalism and if it is, it’s the laziest type. It’s just an analysis of a series of reports done by a government organization. The stories are made up of information that is either publicly available, easily obtained through an ATI request, or given by a spokesperson. It’s not uncovering a hidden plot by the OLF, it’s looking into an internal report that is well within its mandate. Whether you agree with the mandate or the amount of money being spent to undertake the study is a different thing in itself. The most annoying part is that these stories are pure red meat for the (rapidly diminishing) target audience of the Gazette. It’s sad to me that this is what’s being passed off as “investigative journalism” now that newsrooms have been hollowed out and newspapers are barely shadows of what they used to be.
@Ian, you’re not guilty if your greeting is simply “bonjour” or another French greeting. And these inspectors aren’t police, they’re people who have been hired by the OLF to survey the linguistic situation in retail around Quebec. As far as I can tell, nobody is getting a fine or being shut down for giving a bilingual greeting.
Kate
CE, it does seem newsworthy to me that details in the report have been blacked out. That’s odd and is bound to make any journalist curious.
CE
Kate, that’s true and seems like it should be the real story. It could be as simple as the OLF not wanting to disclose individual people or business, or it could be something nefarious but it’s not really being investigated by the journalist. Instead, we’re getting 5 days of stories that are basically overly in-depth descriptions of a government agency’s series of surveys.
Kate
I suspect that the report says things are not so bad, but the OQLF knows its whole existence depends on the credo that French is in a permanent state of peril. But that’s the one thing that won’t be reported.
Poutine Pundit
This is sensationalist clickbaity journalism. The writer is framing it as if there’s a major cover-up, but if you look closely at the bottom of the article, it clarifies that “the redacted information related to the administration of the research firm,” not the study’s results or validity. It’s a non-story being spun into an OQLF conspiracy.
Nicholas
PP, why should the administration of the research firm, which is conducting work on behalf of the public and paid for by the government, be redacted? I know lots of people who consult for governments, and I get way more emails from them, and frequently the emails note that all work on a government project is subject to public disclosure laws. TBF those are usually American; Canadian governments and businesses love hiding this stuff (which a scholar I know says is part of the reason why these services cost so much).
Kevin
“easily obtained through an ATI request”
Oh that made me laugh.
One does not simply get information from an Access to Information request in this country from any agency.
CE
I know Access to Information is complicated in Canada but I presume the people most adept at getting information from the government through ATI would be journalists.
Nicholas
ATIP is not actually complicated. You ask for a document, and the government has to give it to you, with some exceptions. The problems are that it takes forever, and that excessive pages or documents are withheld (and then you have to complain to the Information Commissioner or sue), and sometimes they make you pay thousands of dollars for it. If the government wants you to have the document, you will get it immediately, but if they don’t they will tell you to file an ATIP, and then stall and hope you’ll forget, relent or give up, partially because it’s no loner newsworthy. (If they don’t care, like it’s something non-controversial you’ll usually get it until later in a government’s term, when they clamp down, but if it’s a journalist asking they assume it’s non-controversial.)
I remember once working in a job where I wanted the list of people who attended a meeting so I could reach out to them. I asked for the information (in Zoom, so it was just a spreadsheet) and I heard nothing until over a year after I left the job, when a contractor hired by the government to follow up on requests in the queue told me he would be trying to get the document in the next month. (I told him it was no longer necessary, just close the request.) I’ve also had people just flatly not respond, even to just give an accusé de réception, and continue not to respond even when I responded multiple times, including cc:ing counsel.
And I’ve worked as a journalist, I know lots of journalists, and they all say the same thing. (I should say it varies greatly, and some are great at responding and really helpful.) The best practice is to just proactively post documents online, and opposition parties love saying they’ll do this when they get in power and then don’t.
jeather
It’s a cover up, almost by definition; we don’t know if it’s major or not because it’s redacted, and “relates to administration” is so broad as to be nearly meaningless.
Kevin
Like Nicholas explained at length (Thank you!) the laws as written are not the policies in practice.
And that is why a long series about one particular agency is worthwhile, because what the public assumes about how things work is often not reflective of reality.
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Kate
The Vivre en ville rent register came to the rescue of a tenant who signed a $1500 lease but discovered that the place was previously rented for much less. A TAL ruling means he can now pay $900 instead.
Joey
Lots here. First of all, the framing is really bad. It’s positioned as “this one weird trick helped this guy save $600 a month” and not “David slays Goliath as landlord is caught ripping off his tenant.” This is nothing but theft and should be called out as such.
Second, we seriously need a rental registry run by government – the onus should be on *landlords* to file their leases with the registry so that there’s no ambiguity. There is no reason property owners should be able to violate the rent control laws simply because tenants don’t have a copy of the previous tenant’s lease. I wonder if Vivre en Ville could be adapted to allow tenants to upload copies of their leases so that new tenants don’t have to chase after old documents from people they don’t know. Ideally Revenu Quebec would run a registry so that landlords could not file their taxes without submitting a copy of the relevant lease to establish a rental registry. In the meantime, the City should set something up and force landlords to upload the last X years of leases if they want to have any interaction with the City (i.e., to get a renovation permit, parking sticker, animal permit, whatever – you own more than one property, you either upload a lease, an affidavit explaining why there’s no lease, or you get no service).
Third, we need huge fines for this sort of scheming to prevent landlords even from being tempted to lie. La Presse really missed an opportunity to elaborate on what fines typically look like. In this case, the potential reward to the landlord is $600/month *forever*… we need fines in the tens of thousands to prevent that from happening. Rent control only works if the penalty for violating it is meaningful.
Last, suppose you find out, via Vivre en Ville, that your landlord is ripping you off, but you can’t get a copy of the previous lease in time for your TAL hearing. Shouldn’t the TAL judge have the power to order the landlord, who 100% will have copies of previous-year leases, to provide a copy of the lease and supporting evidence (e.g., bank statements showing rental payments, etc.)? The law places an impossible onus on tenants here, who are only bringing these cases because they are being robbed – why not place the burden on the landlords, who have all the relevant information, to prove their case. Are there any other administrative courts that are so titled in favour of one class of users?
Kate
Joey, thanks for the analysis.
jeather
Joey, you’re absolutely right, but MNAs tend to be landlords with friends and family who are landlords, not renters, and the CAQ in particular has shown disinterest in restricting landlords in any way, so this won’t happen unless we get, say, a PQ minority and QS balance of power.
Clifford
Kudos Joey. Thank you. If the government feels it OK to propose massive fines for young doctors who dare leave the public system, then why not target landlords who knowingly abuse the asymmetric rent control system, right? It’s hypocritical to say we want to protect tenants, and then refuse to close the enormous loopholes that already exist. To wit: the CAQ essentially shut down the lease transfer system. Perhaps it’s time for this next.
Ian
Even city council has landlords on it. The system is rigged.
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Kate
Exo unveiled a new locomotive on Tuesday, which it plans to put on the St‑Jérôme line, but the schedule will continue the same. Ridership hasn’t yet returned to pre‑pandemic levels.
steph 14:32 on 2025-01-16 Permalink
The problem is landlords are in cahoots with each other in that you generally need your previous landlord as a refrence for a new location. I can’t imagine a landlord giving a good refrence to someone who gets in their way of lying on the G clause.
With the Vivre en Ville website, it’ll be even easier for landlords to check if you have uploaded your old lease to that tennant favoring website”. Only a trouble maker would do that – application refused.
Too many MP’s are landlords. The conflict of interest should block them from voting on these important issues.