Disclaimer: information, not legal advice

This page says, without fine print, what Rent Guideline is and what it is not. It is the full version of the site's disclaimer; the rest of the conditions are in the terms of use.

1. What you can expect from this site

Rent Guideline reports the rent increase limits and the related rules of Ontario, British Columbia and Nova Scotia, and the rent figures published by Statistics Canada. Every figure is read in an official source and is shown with that source and the date it was checked. How that works is described in Methodology.

Even so, limits change, governments publish new positions, and every tenancy has particulars that no general page can capture. Everything you read here should be understood with the limits that follow.

2. This is not legal advice

This is the most important section on this page. Read all of it.

The content of rentguideline.com is general information. It is not legal, tax or financial advice, and it cannot replace advice about your own situation.

The person who writes and maintains this site is not a lawyer. He is not called to the bar in any province or territory of Canada, is not a member of any law society, and holds no Canadian legal qualification. There is no firm, no legal department and no licensed professional behind this site reviewing its content. That is stated here, in About and in Contact, and it is the reason the site shows the official source of every figure instead of invoking an authority it does not have.

2.1. There is no professional relationship

Reading this site, using its tools and exchanging email with the contact address create no solicitor-client relationship, no retainer, no professional engagement and no duty of confidentiality between you and the operator. Nothing published here, and nothing said in reply to an email, is a professional opinion about a particular case.

2.2. What the tools do and do not do

The tools take the published limit or rule and apply it to the numbers and dates you type. Their results are only as accurate as what you enter, and they have no official standing of any kind. They bind nobody: not a landlord, not a tenant, not a tribunal, not a government office, not a court.

Whether a limit covers your unit depends on facts the tool cannot see: the date the unit was first occupied, the kind of building, the type of tenancy, who the landlord is, and what your agreement says.
The date a notice counts as given depends on how it was delivered and on what can be proved about it.
The documents in your file, such as your lease and the notice itself, are not visible to a tool, and they can change the answer.
The tools cover residential tenancies in three provinces only. Other provinces and special regimes, such as manufactured home parks and land-lease communities, are not calculated.

2.3. What the site answers for, and what it does not

The site undertakes that the figures and the rules it cites are the ones the official source publishes, and it applies the procedure described in Methodology to that end.

That undertaking does not extend to the outcome of your situation. What a tenant or landlord actually ends up with depends on the real dates, the real amounts, the unit, the paperwork, the deadlines met and the view taken by whoever decides. No figure on this site is a decision, a prediction, or a finding that an increase is or is not allowed.

The operator is not liable for the decisions you make on the basis of this site or for their consequences: giving or not giving a notice, paying or refusing to pay an increase, filing or not filing an application, letting a deadline pass, or any other act or omission. Deciding is yours; advising is a lawyer's. Nor is the operator liable for loss arising from an error or omission in the content, from the site being unavailable, or from a figure being out of date between the day the rule changed and the day the site was corrected. All of this applies only to the extent the applicable law allows, and nothing in it excludes a liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, or any right you have as a consumer under the law of your province.

2.4. Who actually decides

Nothing on this site decides anything. The bodies that do are these:

In Ontario, the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) decides tenancy applications, including those about rent increases.
In British Columbia, the Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB) decides disputes between landlords and tenants, including disputes about rent increases.
In Nova Scotia, the Residential Tenancies Program handles disputes between landlords and tenants.

If an official figure or decision you have received from one of those bodies does not match what this site says, the official one governs. I would also be grateful if you told me, through Contact, because there is probably something here to correct.

2.5. Where to get help

For anything that affects your money, your home or a deadline, speak to a lawyer or a tenant legal clinic in your province. Legal aid exists in every province for those who qualify. Each tool page names the official bodies and the places where free help is available for that province.

3. If you find an error

Write to hello@rentguideline.com. You do not need to be sure, you do not need to work in the field, and you do not need to know what the right figure is. Saying that something does not look right is enough. How corrections are handled is described in Methodology.

The information on this site is general and is not legal, tax or financial advice. For your own situation, speak to a lawyer or a tenant legal clinic in your province. Sergio, editor of Rent Guideline.