Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I said in my Member’s statement today, there seems to be a bit of a crisis out there where cars are more important than the safe access that some women want and deserve to their apartment building. That seems to be a real shame. I tried to highlight that narrative in my Member’s statement. I’ll have questions to the Minister of Justice about what he will be willing to do.
In this particular case my question is: What remedies are now available to the enforcement order of a rental officer when a landlord or tenant, as in this particular case, has trouble getting the order enforced and followed through by the landlord as issued by the rental officer?
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Minister responsible for Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The rental officer has powers and authorities as identified within the Residential Tenancies Act. When a dispute occurs between a tenant and a landlord and cannot be resolved through mediation or discussion, the rental officer does have the power to make an order. Once filed with the court, that order does have the power of the courts. If one of the parties disagrees with the order, there is a right to appeal. The right to appeal is the cornerstone of the Canadian justice system and that cannot be ignored. When an appeal is filed, the Supreme Court has a couple of options. They can allow the appeal, dismiss the appeal, or change or cancel the order. If following the appeal the order is upheld, actions can be taken to make sure that the landlord and tenant comply with the order. Where an order has been made and is not under appeal and is not followed by one of the parties, a person or corporation can be charged with an offence. If found guilty, a person is liable to a fine of $2,000 and a corporation of a fine up to $25,000.
I appreciate that canned answer because it really structures part of the problem. The thing is, the rental office is really meant to be something simple. Somebody can go in, they have a dispute, it’s ruled on one way or the other whether they like it or not. It’s about follow-up and commitment on these particular orders.
We have a situation where the appearance of the order is not complied with and they continue to have trouble with that. That brings us to the question. The rental office has no follow-up power and enforcement power. Why do we need to send people to court? Why don’t we review the situation within the act?
The department is reviewing a number of issues with the legislation that were raised by the rental officer. One of the issues that was not raised was this particular issue about the powers and the orders and the enforcement of those orders.
However, recognizing the concerns of my two colleagues as well as people throughout the Northwest Territories, I have directed the Department of Justice to look at possible issues relating to the enforcement of orders under the Residential Tenancies Act. In this review we need to determine that there are actually issues that can be addressed through the legislation or whether there are some other means to address these enforcement issues. They will be looking into that.
I’m hoping to get back to committee with some sort of analysis and report, as well as the Member, this fall. I will take that to committee and we will have a discussion and we’ll figure out where to go from there to improve this service in the future so that this type of thing doesn’t happen again.
I’ll thank the Minister for scooping my third question, which ultimately only left me with the fact that is it anticipated that there will be amendments coming forward this fall? I’m just trying to get a sense of what he was after. Ultimately this issue needs to be reviewed. It sounds like that is what he was about to do. I want to make sure that it gets reviewed in a timely way so that we don’t put other people at risk. Is that what he’s saying? That he’ll bring forward amendment to regulation changes that can be implemented immediately?
I agree completely. We want to make sure that this type of thing doesn’t happen. What I’m committing to do is providing a bit of an analysis and report on what can be done to make sure that orders can be enforced and how they can be enforced. I’m not sure that’s going to require a legislative amendment. It may be policy, it might be regulation. We will do that research and analysis. We will bring it to committee. We will present it to committee and seek direction from committee and the Member as well. We will seek direction on how we want to move forward on that. It may be legislation; it may not be legislation. We will do something.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
