Que. housing minister: Transferring your lease 'is giving the next person someone else's property'

  Quebec's minister responsible for housing, France-Élaine Duranceau, wonders whether it would be better to intervene in rent increases when a dwelling is transferred from one tenant to another, rather than in lease transfers. During Tuesday's parliamentary committee study of her bill, the housing minister seemed to continue to have reservations about lease transfers by tenants. Transferring your lease "is giving the next person someone else's property," she said in a conversation with David Searle, a lawyer and lecturer in housing law. "Transferring a lease is not the answer," she added. She asked Searle if it wouldn't be better to intervene at the source of the problem: the fact that, at the time of the transfer, "there are rent increases that aren't what you'd like, so shouldn't we be working on those?"

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Quebec short-term rental law in effect, with big fines for uncertified listings

Hello, click here MONTREAL — Quebec’s new tourist accommodation law is now in effect, with hefty fines of up to $100,000 for short-term rental platforms listing properties without a proper government certificate. Under a provincial law adopted in June, as of today rental platforms like Airbnb are prohibited from displaying listings that don’t have a registration number and certificate issued by the province. People who want to rent their properties for stays of 31 days or fewer have to acquire registration numbers from Quebec’s tourism industry regulator and display them in their online listings. Rental platforms had until Sept. 1 to start verifying the validity of those registration numbers, which the government issues in the form of PDF certificates. Operators of rentals who display false or inaccurate registration information face fines of up to $50,000, and platforms must now have a representative in Quebec or face a fine of up to $20,000. The City of Montreal announced last month that due to numerous illegal tourist accommodations with falsified registrations, it would deploy a squad of inspectors in three central boroughs to identify illegal short-term rentals and dole out fines. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 1, 2023.    

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