Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up today on a statement I made earlier this week regarding changes to the Residential Tenancies Act. The powers of the NWT rental officer as outlined in the act are sadly lacking. Amendment to the legislation to improve on those powers is needed.
The rental officer’s job is to help landlords and tenants with disputes, and most problems can be worked out privately. The rental officer will encourage you to do that wherever possible. In some cases, though, agreement cannot be reached and the rental officer must make a unilateral decision regarding a dispute. It’s something that he does very well.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation website describes the NWT rental officer this way: The rental officer is given many of the powers formerly held only by the courts. The rental officer provides information, mediates, and acts as a judge as circumstances warrant. In cases where parties cannot reach agreement through mediation, the rental officer must hold a hearing. At this point in the process the rental officer begins to act like a judge.
Unlike a judge, the rental officer’s decisions are not binding on either party in the dispute and can be ignored by either party. The only recourse for a complainant is to take the matter to court. As I’ve said often before, the courts are not a viable option for many of our residents. In the minds of many of our residents, it’s not a cost-effective avenue for dispute resolution.
A recent editorial in News/North commenting on a landlord/tenant dispute stated, “That a Supreme Court judge needs to be asked to ponder the validity of a rental officer’s order seems like a terrible waste of time and money. We can understand why there is an appeal process, but as it stands now, the advantage is with large landlords with deep pockets to hire lawyers so they can fight complaints.” It goes on to say, “A mechanism should be there for the order to be enforced. If that means the territorial government hands the rental officer the power to summon a sheriff after a month of non-compliance passes by, then so be it.”
That recent refusal of a landlord to comply with the rental officer’s decision raises many questions. Who foots the bill for court time? Who pays for the judge? Should a minor matter as a fence dispute have to go to court? Should it cost those involved so much time, money and distress? Who is being served by this protracted process and how are they being served?
It wouldn’t take much to make the necessary amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act to provide the rental officer with the power to make his decisions binding and to provide justice without going to court for tenants and landlords who have won hard-fought battles. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
