Cigarette: a tenant sees his lease go up in smoke

A smoker saw his hope of staying in his rental unit go up in smoke. In a recent ruling, the Régie du logement accepted a rental building owner’s request to terminate the lease of a tenant who refused to obey the rule prohibiting smoking in the building’s private and shared spaces.

The tenant was renting a room in a nursing home. The lease he signed in 2014 included the building’s rule against smoking. He never, however, followed the rule and continued to smoke despite constant warnings.

At the hearing, the landlord’s representative described the aggravations caused by the tenant’s smoking, noting among other things that a toilet seat had been damaged by burning cigarettes. He also testified that the tenant had threatened an employee who had warned him for the umpteenth time to stop smoking. Despite all the chances he’d been given, the tenant was not obeying the rule, even though there was a smoking room nearby.

Administrative Judge Isabelle Normand first identified the matter in dispute: whether a lease termination could be based on cigarette smoking. She also noted that the owner had to prove that the tenant’s non-compliance with the lease was causing him and/or other occupants serious harm.

The commissioner’s decision rested on a much-publicized ruling made earlier this year, which CORPIQ has referred to on several occasions. In that case, the lease of a tenant in Matane who was allowed to smoke cannabis for medical reasons was terminated by the rental housing board due to the harm caused to the two owners living in the building.

According to the court’s more recent decision, the owner satisfactorily demonstrated that the tenant had acted against the rules repeatedly. Through his inappropriate behaviour and breaches of the lease, added Judge Normand, the tenant had caused harm to the owner. She felt a last-chance order was not appropriate in this case since the tenant was not present and could not provide his version of the story.