On January 21, Quebec’s housing tribunal, the Tribunal Administratif du Logement (TAL), issued new recommendations to increase rents by 3.1 per cent for leases renewing between April 2, 2026 and April 1, 2027. The tribunal recommended that the rent for leases renewing April 1st or earlier be increased by 4.5 per cent. For tenants who have services like meals, nursing, housekeeping or medical assistance included in their rent, such as seniors, this surge is intended to amount to about 6.7 per cent, according to the new TAL guidelines.
The 2026-2027 recommendations were determined by the TAL using a new method of calculation. With the old formula proving inefficient in post- Covid years, the new formula takes inflation and previous rent prices into account. While Eric Sansoucy, spokesperson of the Corporation des propriétaires immobiliers du Québec (CORPIQ) representing Quebec landlords, told the Montreal Gazette that “the balanced solution is at inflation,” it has been shown that if the new formula had been applied to preceding years, excluding 2025, the TAL would have predicted a much steeper increase in rent over the past two decades. Thus, tenants associations have protested against the new recommendations, with Shannon Franssen, interim coordinator of the Coalition of Housing Rights Committees of Quebec (RCLALQ), declaring to CTV News that the new TAL formula contributes to an “inflationary spiral” of rent prices. Franssen explains that, seeing as the new calculation takes previous rent prices into account and rents have increased for the past few years, “rents are going up and justify further rent increases.”
The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) reported that in Montreal, despite an overall easing in the market, rents increased by 7.2 per cent in 2025 — a number significantly above the TAL’s 2025-2026 5.9 per cent recommendation. Steve Blair, community organizer for the Quebec Coalition of Housing Committees and Tenants’ Associations (RCLALQ), remarked to the Daily that rents “often go up faster than the [predicted] rate.” Blair explained that it is often difficult to prevent landlords from bumping the prices up as “tenants either don’t refuse, or can’t refuse, or there is a change in tenants.”
This 7.2 per cent increase outpaced the overall increase in income, meaning housing became even less affordable for most. The easing in the market that the CMHC describes is partly due to a rise in new, largely unaffordable, residences, while affordable units remain desperately scarce and are even disappearing from Montreal with further rent increases.
It is in this context of already unaffordable housing and heightening prices that the TAL recommended a 3.1 per cent increase for the year to come. Blair described this increase as only slightly “less bad than last year,” which he had characterised as the “worst year on record by far.”
Nevertheless, these TAL guidelines are only recommendations. As a tenant, you may refute the increase in rent if you deem it unfair or unlawful. In its last fiscal year, the TAL received 22,494 requests to settle a rent dispute. Resources provided by the RCLALQ allow Montreal tenants to more easily calculate how much rent may increase, how to refuse rent increases, and what procedures to follow afterwards. Syndicat des locataires autonomes de Montréal (SLAM), the autonomous syndicate of tenants, also provides support for tenants seeking help or suffering from abusive landlords. The collective actively protested against the new TAL recommendations on January 29 and helped build tenant unions in the city.
Amidst rising rent prices and unaffordable housing, it is important to remember that tenants have rights too.