Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada released the Blueprint for a Renters’ Bill of Rights on September 16, 2024.
This blueprint sets out a policy approach in broad terms, but does not provide or enforce any specific legal obligations for provincial, territorial, or municipal governments. Provinces are required to publish an annual public report on their progress toward these approaches, but it remains unclear how the federal government intends to incentivize buy-in (and consequently, it remains unclear how the lives and realities of renters will be tangibly changed).
Of the policy approaches that were introduced in this blueprint, there are several important inclusions:
- Affordability: there is scarce detail on preserving and expanding affordability for renters other than the suggestions to establish and maintain “protections against excessive rent increases” – a true test will be if the government of Ontario finally rescinds its policy on rent decontrol in new buildings, where residents face de facto evictions in the form of multi-thousand dollar increases. (It is worth noting that even where rent control does apply, there are many loopholes that contravene any protections intended). Furthermore, without protecting renters for unfair rent increases and price setting by financialized landlords, protections against “instability in the rental market, such as rental assistance programs, and rent banks” will simply be putting more money in the pockets of multi-billion dollar companies.
- Transparency: the call to make rental details available (if implemented) could be a boon for renters (and everyone). There are major information inequalities between landlords and renters; where landlords can request work and pay histories, letters of recommendation, credit scores, and a myriad of other personal information, renters don’t even know if there are major maintenance issues with a prospective home, or if the landlord has a history of bad-faith evictions. They also don’t know if the landlord has a history of raising rent significantly between renters, or how often the unit turns over. The Rent Registry from Vivre en Ville is a model data collection and sharing framework born from this major data gap in the housing sector.
- Evictions: another major data gap in housing is the lack of data on evictions. BSH researchers have worked tirelessly to quantify patterns in eviction filings, which show systemic discrimination in major cities and disparities in treatment between landlords and tenants by the tenancy board. Canadian Housing Survey data also points to high rates of no-fault evictions in major cities. The blueprint calls for provinces to develop standard processes and simplified language to facilitate the rental of housing, however, the BSH’s review of provincial eviction processes shows major disparities in how evictions are treated between jurisdictions. Federal leadership in developing standard processes, such as standard lease agreements, is needed if there is to be any level of fairness and transparency between jurisdictions.
Like tens of thousands of renters across the country, we won’t be holding our breath on substantive changes as a result of this blueprint, but provinces and territories who want to make meaningful changes to their Residential Tenancy Acts can look to a number of examples and recommendations from the research and non-profit sector, including work by CCHR, CHRA, and Homeless Hub.
