Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to carry on from my statement yesterday and address another provision that I feel is lacking in the Residential Tenancies Act. Sections 30(1)(b), 37, 38 and 40 of the act reference the landlord’s responsibility for tenant safety. I agree with my constituents, who believe that the act does not go far enough towards ensuring tenant protection.
Landlords should have to make sure their buildings are safe and secure from crime. This will mean patrolling their parking lots, laundry rooms and hallways on a regular basis. This means educating their tenants about security threats and taking them to task if they allow unsafe practices in their buildings, things such as not escorting guests out of the building or allowing strangers entry into the building. Yellowknife, unfortunately, has a number of examples of lack of safety in this area on which we can draw.
Even if the rental property is a stand-alone dwelling with one tenant, landlords must be held accountable to provide adequate outdoor lighting, motion sensor lighting and working alarm systems. The RCMP should be enlisted to perform security audits and the reports should be shared with tenants. Landlords, in my view, should be held to a higher standard than individual homeowners in regard to safety and security. The act requires a landlord to make premises reasonably secure. I
believe this determinant is in the act, but it does not specify how to do that.
Yellowknife has a number of multi-use buildings, particularly in our downtown, and the city is moving towards developing more. We have buildings with commercial space and residential space beside or above that commercial space. Occupied space of commercial spaces do not generally represent a problem, but if the commercial part of the multi-use space is unoccupied, the landlord must do a lot more so that the space and the whole building is adequately secured at all times in order to ensure the safety and the protection of the tenant or tenants. This is a difficult issue to correct.
The Residential Tenancies Act already has clauses which reference landlord responsibility. How much more should be required? Of that I’m not sure, but I do believe some sections or some regulations should be made stronger. So I ask the Minister of Justice to consider this problem, this concern, as he and the department consider amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act. Thank you.