Any Renters out there?....Did you know...

[Scott Mayers]

...that you lack a right to privacy and protection in law of any rights to communicate freely and safely? 

I've been arguing against SaskTel here about this factor based on an experience a few years ago when my line was cut by some unknown cause. I used only a land line at the time and when this occurred on a weekend, I had initial difficulty trying to get them to repair this because they claimed that the problem is the landlord's and my landlord asserted the opposite.

So I discovered that the reasoning of SaskTel was that since the lines are connected through a box and lines INSIDE the building, the legal responsibility is granted to the owner, not the tenants using services. The landlord argued that the service is not the responsibility of the owner of the building and so cannot (or chooses not) to do anything. (The caretaker could intend this but we have no means of knowing.)

This raises an interesting idea: Why should any renter ever be liable to pay any outstanding bills (or any bill at all) when they can also justify the actual bill as legally due to the landlord, not the tenant?

This gap.....between the outside wall of the building to the particular apartment, is itself out of both the power of the tenant AND the company providing this service. So the tenant has a technical right to hold both liable but this is unable to be done legally.

The implications of this are:

The landlord can legally TAP your line, CUT your line, and even USE your services by any discretion they choose because this gap between the companies connection for ANY services (like even power), and can be tampered without either the tenant having any right to impose nor the government being able to have sincere power to discover this.

This power extends to the right of the landlord to pass this right of access on to others, like the policing departments of any level, for instance. This means that any renter can have all their rights violated AND, if you are poor, for REQUIRING to rent, this is also a proof of discrimination specifically against the poor.

Let me hear from others to see what they might know of other provinces by renters or land-owners alike. I think this NEEDS to be addressed. Thank you...

Edited July 6, 2018 by Scott Mayers
emphasizing the ANY services between the outside and the tenant.

[turningrite]

I'm not sure the situation is the same here in Ontario. I once had my phone service (through which I also received my internet service at the time) cut for several hours by a contractor who was working for my landlord. Several other apartments in the building were similarly impacted. When I was able to contact the service provider, I was told that as the issue arose due to a planned renovation rather than an emergency the landlord had an obligation, with which it hadn't complied, to notify the service provider and the affected tenants in advance of the disruption.

In the building in which I live, and presumably in rental complexes throughout the province, it's my understanding that telecom providers own and maintain the cable and fiber optic lines (the old copper telephone lines are apparently no longer being maintained) up to the point at which they enter individual apartments. The real problem in these situations, I think, is with enforcement of landlord obligations. I believe I might have been able to pursue a complaint with the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal (or whatever they call it these days) but the value of the claim would have been too small to make doing so worthwhile. A tenant advocacy representative told attendees at a tenants' meeting that tenants seldom file or pursue complaints when they have a right to do so. Most can't be bothered, I suspect, both because it's a hassle and the available compensation is so limited.

Edited July 6, 2018 by turningrite