P.E.I. government-commissioned report points to benefits of rental registry

A consultant's report commissioned by the P.E.I. government to explore the possibility of a rental registry concluded it would provide benefits for both tenants and landlords.

A draft of the report from Stantec Consulting was delivered to government in November 2021. Over the next six months government staff worked on revisions, but the report was never released to the public — and ultimately the Dennis King government decided not to move ahead with a registry.

CBC News received a copy of the report from a member of the public who obtained it through a freedom of information request.

In the report, Stantec told the province a rental registry would lead to a better-documented system of rental agreements, "in which tenants will be protected from undue increases in rent and changes to service provisions, and landlords will conduct their business with improved knowledge of the market and more uniform practices."

A registry documenting how much rent Island tenants pay to their landlords has long been proposed as a tool to help enforce the province's rent controls. In the absence of the Progressive Conservative government bringing one in, Green Party MLA Peter Bevan-Baker has announced plans to introduce a private member's bill to implement a registry this fall.

While the report is generally supportive of the notion of implementing a registry, if Stantec made any recommendation to the province for or against such a tool, that was redacted in the version of the report released through freedom of information.

"The rental registry as proposed for P.E.I. has a clear role as a tool for monitoring rental increases relative to annually prescribed [Island Regulatory and Appeals Commission] guidelines," the report states.

In a statement to CBC News, the provincial Department of Housing, Land and Communities said that no other jurisdiction "has a rental registry for the purpose of rent control." 

Rather than develop a registry, the department said its priority has been to monitor the impact of measures to prevent illegal rent increases that were included in the Residential Tenancy Act , which came into effect in April 2023.

Former federal Green Party candidate Darcie Lanthier said there's a good reason no other jurisdiction has this type of rental registry: Other jurisdictions don't have similar rent control regimes.

Lanthier created her own rental registry in 2021, after a Green Party motion passed unanimously in the P.E.I. legislature in 2019 calling on the province to create one.

"I knew that people were being overcharged and there was just no solution to find out by how much," said Lanthier.

"The rental registry was an excellent idea when it was introduced in the legislature. It was an excellent idea when I ended up doing it. And it's going to be great, for example, if IRAC takes it over."

As a result of her registry, she said, IRAC has ordered landlords to return more than $100,000 to tenants, including two individual awards worth more than $20,000 each, after determining they had imposed rent increases above allowable limits.