Residential Tenancy Act 'a long time coming' and still falls short, says Opposition
CBC
There are still no signs that P.E.I.'s new Residential Tenancy Act, first drafted in 2019 and still in consultation, will make it to the floor of the legislature any time soon.
Green housing critic Karla Bernard said despite all the time the government has had to work on it, the bill still fails to make the fundamental changes that are required.
"This Residential Tenancy Act has been a long time coming. It's been well over two years since they initially said that they were going to bring them forward, and there was a whole bunch of time to really look at all these things, to pick them apart," said Bernard.
"The same systemic barrier, those same systemic issues, are going to be there if we don't look at what we're doing right now — what's going well and what's not going well — and trying to come up with something better for people."
CBC News asked for an interview about the act with Housing Minister Brad Trivers on March 3, but the minister was not able to find an available time in the following two weeks.
Cecil Villard, executive director of the Residential Rental Association, a group representing rental property owners, agrees with Bernard that the new act should not be rushed.
"This is a really important piece of legislation for both tenants and landlords, so I think it's really important that we take our time and we get it right," said Villard.
He noted the current legislation is 30 years old, and Islanders can expect this act could last that long as well.
He said his group has met with the Liberal and Progressive Conservative caucuses and is scheduled to meet with the Green caucus. After that they will meet with the minister. In the meantime, they are not speaking publicly about what they would like to see in the act.
"We're going through a consultation process," said Villard.
"We're not going to negotiate this in the media. That wouldn't serve anybody, landlords or tenants."
While the act needs careful deliberation, Bernard said there are some urgent issues that need to be dealt with.
Among those is rapidly rising rent. In the two years since the first draft of this legislation came out, rents are up 4.6 and 8.1 per cent, the two biggest rent increases of the last decade, despite rent controls that limited increases to 1.3 and 1.0 per cent. These are average rents, as measured by CMHC, and include new units, which are not rent controlled in the first year, and units where the owner successfully applied for a rent increase above the guideline.
In an email to CBC News on March 3, Trivers acknowledged these rent increases are a problem.