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Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
I just saw this story on the CFCN news (come back BARB!) and the woman was fretting over utility bills that she's on the hook for.
Now maybe I'm missing something really obvious here, but why can't (or doesn't) she just cancel them all? Why can't she just let this moron freeze in the dark?
It is a duplex, so maybe turning off the gas isn't feasible, but the electricity?
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I imagine that that would fall under the place having to be habitable portion of the act, and if she did that she'd probably have to face some fines.
In some areas, the tenant can be 100% responsible for the utilities and if they rack up a huge amount and disappear, then the utility has to chase the tenant directly. Disconnect/reconnect is all up to the tenant.
In other areas (sounds like Sylvan is one of them) even if the utilities are under the tenant's name, the landlord is ultimately responsible and all charges will go back to the landlord if the tenant doesn't pay. I think in those areas the utilities will keep the landlord informed if things go bad, or at least copy the landlord on bills, or something like that. This is from memory from when I had a property in Lethbridge and they were like that.. EDIT: Oh yeah Chestermere is like that too, town of Chestermere contacted us after a tenant got a few months behind.
Anyway, just because one side isn't fulfilling 100% of their obligations to the agreement doesn't mean the other side can just arbitrarily decide what they don't have to provide.
There's a process to go through, and this lady for some reason has avoided going through it for two years, despite being in contact with people from the government, so either there's something strange going on that's not being reported, or she's avoiding taking him to court or the mediation service for some reason.