The Residential Tenancies Act is fairly comprehensive. To this end, it considers circumstances where a tenant carries out an illegal act or illegal business in the rental unit. Here’s what you should know.

What is considered an illegal act by the tenant?

There are several conditions that a tenant’s act would need to meet to be illegal:

1. An illegal act cannot be trivial or purely technical. For example, losing an access card to underground parking is not an illegal act. It is both trivial and purely technical.
2. An illegal act must relate to the tenancy and the rental unit. It must be such that it harms the unit or significantly interferes with the landlord’s or other tenants’ lives. Accordingly, if, for example, the tenant commits an offence of careless driving while driving home from work, while the act is illegal, the landlord cannot use it as a ground for eviction. On the other hand, if the tenant turned his/her apartment into a carpenter’s workshop (runs an illegal business), this may create a ground for eviction.
3. A tenant’s act may be illegal under the Residential Tenancies Act, such as non-payment of rent, damaging the unit, etc. If this is the case, the landlord should evict the tenant on the ground of violating that particular provision. Eviction for committing an illegal act is when the tenant has done something illegal that affects the tenancy. However, the Residential Tenancies Act does not include that as a separate ground for eviction.
4. The landlord can evict a tenant for an illegal act if the tenant’s guest or occupant of the unit committed it.

How to evict a tenant for committing an illegal act

Eviction notice

• As always, the first step is to serve a tenant with the appropriate eviction notice. The eviction date on this notice may vary depending on the type of illegal activity. It is usually 20 days if the notice is about illegal activity that is not drug trafficking.
• If the tenant commits illegal activity that includes production of an illegal drug, trafficking an illegal drug or possession of an illegal drug for the purpose of trafficking, the term of the eviction notice is 10 days.
• Sometimes a landlord receives the information that his/her tenant is a drug addict. This fact alone is not a sufficient ground for eviction. The landlord must specifically prove that the tenant produces or traffics illegal drugs.

Eviction application

• The next step is filing an application with the Landlord and Tenant Board to evict the tenant for committing an illegal act.
• The landlord can file the application immediately after giving the notice to terminate the tenancy on this ground to the tenant. However, she/he cannot file it later than 30 days after the date, which the eviction date she/he put on the notice.
• The Landlord and Tenant Board schedules the hearing of the application upon receiving the landlord’s application.

Hearing

• Preparation and conducting a hearing is the part, which represents more difficulty than all previous steps.
• The burden of proof of the illegal act lies on the landlord. The landlord should prove the case on the balance of probabilities. This is the standard that is lower than the one in the criminal procedure, where the standard of proof is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” However, the thorough preparation for the hearing is still a good idea.
• The landlord should collect and properly present all available evidence. They include witness statements, photographs and documentary evidence that should be carefully collected and properly presented.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us for a free assessment of your tenant’s case.