The article of Bill 31 on lease transfers was adopted in parliamentary committee on Tuesday, at the end of a long dialogue of the deaf between the Minister responsible for Housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, and the oppositions, notably Quebec solidarity, who multiplied the suggestions for amendments.
Tuesday, at the end of the morning, the deputy for Québec solidaire Andrés Fontecilla indicated that he had numerous amendments to present on the question of lease transfers.
One of them proposed maintaining the right of tenants to assign their lease while preventing them from making profits themselves by subletting or transferring rent, which constitutes a big irritant for landlords. Another suggested that landlords be allowed to block lease assignments only in areas where the vacancy rate is above 3%.
These two amendments were defeated — the government deputies voted against, the two elected Liberals abstained and the Parti Québécois was not represented.
Mr. Fontecilla’s momentum was finally interrupted early in the afternoon for procedural reasons, which allowed the parliamentary committee to adopt the article on lease transfers and move on.
Dialogue of the deaf
Before these procedures, the elected representative had spent the morning relaunching Minister Duranceau on the merits of her reform. “The balance is upset to the disadvantage of tenants, and that is what is the reality,” he said, before suggesting that the minister was “disconnected from this reality.”
Visibly exasperated, Mme Duranceau reiterated that the lease transfer was not the “right tool” to counter real estate speculation. She also criticized Québec solidaire for spreading “disinformation”. She recalled that originally, lease assignments were intended to allow a tenant to break their lease when they have to move, so as not to pay two rents at the same time. The use of lease transfers, she says, has since been misused, in the context of the housing crisis.
But Québec solidaire maintains that any measure to limit speculation – however small – is legitimate in the context. “The minister is putting coal in the furnace of real estate speculation,” denounced Mr. Fontecilla.
Legislative gridlock
The time available to study Bill 31 is shrinking more and more as the holidays approach: there are now only seven days of parliamentary work left on the agenda.
The Land Planning Commission, which is studying the housing bill, must also divide its time between the latter and Bill 39 of Minister Andrée Laforest. The study of Bill 31 had to be suspended from Tuesday evening until Friday.
In the press scrum, MP Fontecilla defended himself from wanting to slow down legislative work. “I am doing my job as a parliamentarian. I am not here to give the government a blank check. »
Bill 31, he said, must be adopted before the end of the session so that tenants can benefit from the provisions aimed at regulating evictions. “There are many provisions which are extremely negative in PL31, but there is one which is important, it is the reversal of the burden of proof [du locataire vers le propriétaire] in the event of eviction. This benefits tenants, and it must be put in place from 1er next January. »
Under Bill 31, landlords who evict tenants for illegitimate reasons would have a greater burden of proof to present if the latter take them to court.