Complaints about N.B. landlords pushing out their tenants spiked in years with rent cap

The number of times tenants who complained their landlords were trying to force them out of their units spiked in 2022 and 2025 — two years New Brunswick renters were protected by a cap on annual rent increases.

The statistics from the province's Tenant and Landlord Relations Office raise new questions about landlords' efforts to circumvent New Brunswick's rent cap, which was implemented temporarily in 2022, and again last February, as a means of protecting tenants after years of soaring rents.

"I've seen tenants who have come to us because they feel that the landlord is harassing them by … trying to use [or] find different ways to terminate the tenancy," said Jeannette Savoie, director of the University of New Brunswick legal clinic.

"I can't prove it. I'm not going to say yes or no, but it looks a little suspicious that the amount of [complaints about] notices to terminate have increased."

Last February Premier Susan Holt's government implemented a rent cap limiting annual rent increases to three per cent for tenants.

But a landlord is no longer restricted to the three per cent limit when a tenant moves out and a new one moves in.

"We know that in other jurisdictions, when we bring in rent control that isn't attached to the unit ... that it incentivizes renovictions and other forms of lease termination," said Matthew Hayes, a spokesperson for the New Brunswick Coalition for Tenants Rights.

"And certainly those numbers would support, you know what we're also seeing, which is that we're getting contacted regularly by people who are facing arbitrary lease terminations."

In New Brunswick, a landlord can get rid of a tenant in good standing by issuing a notice of tenancy termination.

As of 2023, a landlord only has four valid reasons for issuing one.

They include instances when the unit requires significant renovations, the unit is needed to house close family of the landlord, the unit is to be used for a non-residential purpose, or if the tenancy arose out of an employment relationship between the tenant and landlord that has come to an end.

CBC News asked the Tenant and Landlord Relations Office for statistics on tenancy terminations going back to 2020.

The office doesn't track tenancy termination notices. Rather, the office only tracks when a tenant complains about one, spokesperson Adam Bowie said in an email.

Since 2020, complaints about termination notices saw bumps in each year when rent control measures were implemented.