Progress of the court hampered by the pandemic

Despite a new law allowing the Tribubal administrative du logement (TAL) to improve its processes, as well as an increased operating budget of 24 million over 5 years and a dozen additional judges, the pandemic will considerably affect its performance for several more months.

In its strategy plan 2020-2023, tabled by the National Assembly in early December, the TAL explains that the many health measures in force have a significant impact on the planning of hearings and have the effect of slowing down the usual scheduling pace. In addition, applications for rent reduction for services not rendered due to the state of emergency may be filed within three years of the loss or decrease in services. "The context may thus slow down the steady improvement in delays observed since 2016-2017," we read.

The TAL also points out that a low vacancy rate increases the incentive for tenants to keep their units and to refuse rent increases, which pushes up the number of rent setting cases at the court. This is what happened in the early 2000s. The Régie du logement had subsequently been unable to absorb the number of accumulated applications due to a lack of additional resources. The TAL's latest annual report confirms that the number of rent setting applications is on the rise. As some CORPIQ members have noted, the outlook is not very good. Whereas it took 5.6 months to get a rent set last year, the TAL is announcing an average target of 17 months this year, 12 months in 2021-2022 and 8 months in 2022-2023.

In terms of non-payment of rent and urgent requests, the average for 2020-2021 wait should be 3 months, double what we have been used to in recent years. Its strategic plan foresees a return to an average wait of 1.5 months for these two types of cases for the fiscal year 2021-2022. It should be recalled that the TAL (formerly the Régie du logement) was paralyzed from March 16 to May 28 by order of the Quebec government, whereas 5000 to 7000 cases are normally introduced monthly.

The TAL assures that the new law governing it will allow it to manage cases more efficiently and to maximize the use of hearing time. On the other hand, it should be considered that this law also introduces measures that will lengthen hearing time and encourage more litigants to file a request with the court, such as allowing the parties to be accompanied by a trusted person (as recommended by the Ombudsman).

In conclusion, the use of technology to hold hearings remotely, as well as an increase in the availability of conciliation sessions when the parties are trying to avoid a trial, are yielding positive results.