Landlording in Canada. Michael Drouillard
tenant is financially qualified to rent your property. Nothing more. Asking for information needed to let you perform a credit check is an example of a valid business purpose as well as asking for the tenant’s rental history.
Asking if the tenant has a university degree, on the other hand, is not a valid business purpose. How does this help you determine if the tenant can afford to rent your property? It doesn’t help you very much at all. You shouldn’t collect such information.
You also shouldn’t collect more information than you need to assess the tenant’s application. For example, some out-of-date application forms will ask tenancy applicants to provide banking information such as the locations of all of the tenant’s bank accounts as well as the bank account numbers. This information, while interesting, does not help you determine if the tenant is financially qualified to rent your property. Do not collect such information.
2. Never use personal information collected from your tenant for a reason other than what is stated to the tenant.
A good application form will state the reason why the tenant’s personal information is being collected, i.e., to assess the tenant’s suitability to rent the property and, if the tenancy is accepted, to manage the tenancy and to enforce obligations that may arise under the tenancy agreement.
Once you have collected personal information for this purpose, do not use it for anything else. Do not, for example, share such information with your friends or colleagues at work. Do not start a blog describing all of your wonderfully qualified tenants in great detail. This sort of practice will easily lead to trouble for the landlord.
3. Keep personal information you collect from your tenant safe and destroy the information when you are no longer required to keep it by law.
Personal information you collect should be safeguarded. Physical douments such as completed tenancy application forms should be under lock and key. Electronic information you collect should be password protected.
You should always retain personal information when you have a legal need to keep it. What if, for example, a tenant you declined to rent to decides to come back a year later with a baseless human rights complaint? You need to have the personal information you collected from the tenant available to protect yourself.
However, when you no longer have a legal need to keep the information, such as after the limitation period has expired for a tenant to initiate legal action against you has expired, it should be destroyed.
Privacy Law
This is different from legislation designed to protect personal information and is a relatively new frontier in Canadian law. Landlords cannot breach the privacy of their tenants.
Generally speaking, the act must be quite significant for it to be considered a breach of privacy. For example, secretly installing a camera inside a tenant’s suite without permission definitely qualifies as a significant breach of privacy. However, installing a camera in an area that only monitors a common area, such as an apartment lobby, is far less likely to be considered a breach of privacy. This is because there is less of a reasonable expectation of privacy in an apartment lobby than there is in a tenant’s personal residence.
On the other hand, installing a camera in a common area that focuses upon a particular tenant’s suite might be considered a breach of that tenant’s privacy. Unfortunately, whether a tenant’s privacy was breached is contextual and it depends on the facts of a given case. It is difficult to say exactly when a landlord has done something that has breached a tenant’s right to privacy.
A good rule of thumb is to never enter the tenant’s suite without express consent or only if the tenancy law of your province provides that you are permitted to enter the tenant’s home at that time. Do not monitor your tenant’s activities in an excessive manner. In most cases, all that you need to know about your tenant can be gained from periodic inspections of the property that you perform after getting the tenant’s consent or by giving notice of your intention to inspect the suite as permitted by the tenancy law of your province.
Never Accept Tenancy Law Advice from Your Tenant
Stating the obvious? Not necessarily.
Here’s an example. On the first of the month when rent’s due, the landlord receives a package from the tenant with a letter (but no cheque):
Dear Landlord,
As you know, my car was broken into several days ago and I’ve decided that I want to move out of this high-risk area. I know that I am normally required to give you one clear month’s notice, but I just spoke to someone at the Residential Tenancy Office and was advised that because I feel endangered, I only have to give you 14 days’ notice.
Consider this my official 14-day notice to leave on July 15th. Since I am only staying for half the month, I am paying half the rent. Since I have already paid you a security deposit, you can consider my last month’s rent paid.
Yours truly,
Rick the Tenant
Many landlords would be confused upon receipt of such a letter, and would let Rick move. The only problem is, Rick didn’t speak with the Residential Tenancy Office, and there is no such thing as a 14-day notice, nor can he apply his security deposit to the rent without the landlord’s consent.
When your tenant tells you what the law is, you must always double check it on your own. Confirm with your own sources; your landlord association or provincial rental authority. Some tenants might seek guidance from a provincial rental authority or tenant’s rights group, but misunderstand the advice, receive incorrect advice, or choose to ignore the advice received. Sometimes there is no consultation at all. In fact, a small minority of tenants use creative interpretation of the law to posture themselves to take advantage of the landlord’s inadequate understanding of the law.
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