(Montreal) Several demonstrations are planned for Saturday against Bill 31, which provides, among other things, for tenants to abolish the right to transfer their lease.
Organized by the Regroupement des logement committees and tenant associations of Quebec (RCLALQ), the rallies will take place in Montreal, Quebec, Rimouski, Rouyn-Noranda and Sherbrooke, in the afternoon.
For Cédric Dussault, spokesperson for the RCLALQ, the abandonment of the right to transfer a lease is “really the straw that breaks the camel’s back”.
Bill 31 would represent a significant setback for tenants. It is odious because it makes tenants lose the right to transfer their lease […] and does not address the root causes (of the housing crisis).
Cédric Dussault, spokesperson for the RCLALQ
On Thursday, Prime Minister François Legault suggested that his government could back down on the measure. Questioned on this subject, the leader of the Coalition Avenir Québec indicated that he would not exclude anything and that it was necessary to “look at the pros and cons”.
The parliamentary committee studying the bill began in Quebec on Thursday.
For a regulation of rent prices
The demonstrators also plan to demand concrete measures from the government to stem this crisis, when we learned earlier this week that the province now had more than 10,000 homeless people and that homelessness had jumped 44% in Quebec in five years.
“We have been asking Minister Duranceau, and many of her predecessors, for an extremely long time to implement real rent control,” alleges Mr. Dussault. This has been our main request for several decades. »
“As long as we do not establish real rent control, with a public register and a cap on rent increases, we will continue to sink into the crisis,” continues the spokesperson.
Tenant assistance organizations say they have noticed for several years an “explosion” of evictions, some of which are carried out under “fraudulent” pretexts whose objective is to considerably increase the price of rent.
“What we are asking is to prohibit evictions when the vacancy rate falls below 3%,” says Mr. Dussault. This is what we are currently seeing everywhere in Quebec; almost all regions are affected. »