Confusion, anger and 5 minutes to avoid eviction: A day at Quebec's jammed rental tribunal

Montreal was, in years past, considered a haven for renters. But those days are long gone.

The cost of rent has jumped since the pandemic — and so have disputes between tenants and landlords.

The number of applications filed with Quebec's rental tribunal, known in French as the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL), has skyrocketed. The bulk of those cases have been initiated by landlords.

There were more than 91,000 cases brought forward at the tribunal in 2023-24, an increase of more than 40 per cent over two years.

"This situation has persisted for several years now, but we can notice that it has been exacerbated," said Daniel Villarreal, a Montreal lawyer and expert in tenants' rights, referring to the rental board.

"The situation does not seem to improve and that's something much more structural on a societal level."

Here's a look at how the TAL works — and doesn't — based on a day at its busy offices at Montreal's Olympic Village.

The hearings are public, but names have been withheld to protect people's privacy.

The largest tribunal office in Montreal is in the city's east end, on the ground floor of an imposing brutalist tower that once housed Olympic athletes. The waiting room resembles a medical clinic, where people sit waiting, documents in hand.

One day last week, one man brought his two teenage children to translate for him. Another taped photos of overflowing trash onto a poster board to help make the case his building wasn't properly maintained.

The waiting area, painted a drab beige, is lined with doors that open onto smaller rooms where administrative judges preside over their cases.

The busiest hearing room is devoted to complaints filed by landlords regarding unpaid rent. These cases are allotted only five minutes each. In accordance with Quebec law, a tenant three weeks behind in their payment can be evicted.

In a single afternoon, administrative judge Leyka Borno, presiding from behind an elevated desk in a black robe, ran through 32 cases involving unpaid rent. That works out to six or seven cases every half hour.

"I don't have more than five minutes per file. It's already been two minutes," she told a tenant at one point.