More provinces should follow Quebec’s lead in seeking to hold short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb accountable for uncertified listings, advocates say.
The Quebec government tabled a bill last Tuesday that would require short-term rental companies to ensure their online listings are certified by the province.
If passed, such companies would face fines of up to $100,000 for each illegal rental listing.
The proposed rules would mark a first for a Canadian jurisdiction, said David Wachsmuth, the Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance at McGill University, noting Quebec and some cities across the country have previously only targeted hosts with unregistered listings.
He said Quebec already had “the best provincial approach to short-term rentals” through its registration system but the problem was that many Airbnb hosts were still skirting those requirements.
“The thing that was missing from Quebec’s approach was something that was going to actually make people follow the rules,” said Wachsmuth.
“The new law puts an onus on Airbnb to actually receive the permit itself from the host. I think that really changes the game in terms of how likely it is that people are going to follow these rules.”
Quebec’s bill would make it illegal for anyone to advertise a short-term rental online without including the number and expiry date for their provincial certificate. It came in response to calls from cities for limits on the number of Airbnb-style rentals, which have removed apartments from the long-term rental market and exacerbated housing shortages.
In March, seven people died in a fire in an Old Montreal heritage building that had been housing illegal short-term rentals on Airbnb. The company later said it would voluntarily remove all uncertified listings in Quebec from its online platform and require all new listings to have certificate numbers.
Cities such as Vancouver and Toronto have mandatory registration systems in place for short-term rentals, but Wachsmuth said that neither framework requires the platform to take the additional step of proactively validating a listing’s permit…
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