After biggest rent hike in decades, Quebec changing method to calculate it

Antoni Nerestant · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 16, 2025 3:27 PM EDT | Last Updated: 16 minutes ago

As tenants crossed Quebec prepare to get deed with a important rent increase, the provincial authorities is making changes to the mode those rent hikes will be calculated.

The changes to the calculation method were outlined Wednesday in Quebec's Official Gazette (page 2368).

They travel conscionable a fewer months aft Quebec's rental tribunal, known successful French arsenic the Tribunal administratif du logement (TAL), recommended an mean rent summation for 2025 of 5.9 per cent for tenants surviving successful homes were vigor is not included.

That's Quebec's largest year-to-year leap successful astatine slightest 3 decades, according to TAL figures dating backmost to 1988.

That proposal is inactive successful effect for this year and the caller calculation method volition beryllium utilized arsenic of 2026. Had the caller method been utilized for this year, the TAL's average recommended rent summation would've been 4.5 per cent, according to a spokesperson for Quebec's lodging minister.

Each year, the TAL releases a acceptable of calculations landlords tin usage earlier sending a announcement of rent summation to a tenant. 

WATCH | This is what renters tin expect successful 2025: 

Simpler and much predictable, curate says

In an interrogation with Radio-Canada's Première heure, Quebec Housing Minister France-Élaine Duranceau said the aged calculation was based on 13 variables. The new 1 volition beryllium based connected four, she said.

Under the caller calculation, the TAL will instrumentality into account:

• The mean user terms scale successful Quebec for the notation twelvemonth and the 3 years preceding it.
• Variations successful municipal taxes.
• Variations successful schoolhouse taxes. 
• Variations successful security costs.

"I'm expecting that determination volition beryllium a amended knowing from the tenant's position and the landlord's perspective, truthful little distrust," she said. "The little distrust determination is, the little struggle determination volition beryllium and we'll trim the fig of cases that extremity up astatine the tribunal."

But a Quebec radical advocating for tenants' rights says the betterment is simply a "missed accidental to curb the lodging situation and abusive spot speculation." 

In a quality release, the Regroupement de comités logement et associations de locataires du Québec (RCLALQ) argued that the caller calculation method "in nary way" responds to tenants' demands for existent rent power successful the province.

"It opens the doorway wide for landlords to summation their profits connected the backs of tenants, with rent increases present based connected the mean emergence successful the outgo of surviving arsenic good arsenic the outgo of large renovations," work the statement.

"In this way, Duranceau has standardized rent increases based not connected the existent costs of managing a building, but connected the imaginable marketplace worth of the property, to the greater payment of landlords."

The radical encourages radical to articulation a nationalist objection for the close to lodging held successful Drummondville, Que., on Tenants' Day,  April 24.

Increases implicit past decade

Although the caller method would've led to a smaller summation for tenants successful 2025, that's not needfully going to beryllium the lawsuit each year.

According to the minister's spokesperson, the TAL increases betwixt 2014 and 2024 totalled 23.7 per cent. With the caller calculation, that summation would've been 23.3 per cent.

"We could truthful accidental that implicit the agelong haul, the increases would've been the same," spokesperson Justine Vézina wrote successful a connection provided to CBC News successful French. 

"Since the variations would beryllium much unchangeable since the [consumer price] scale would instrumentality into information an mean of 3 years, determination are successful information years wherever the summation would've been higher and others wherever it would've been lower."

With the 5.9 per cent rent summation recommended by the TAL successful 2025, idiosyncratic who pays $1,400 successful rent volition spot it spell up to $1,482. Had it been 4.5. per cent with this caller method, the rent would've gone up to $1,463.