Connect with us

Business

Pets Vs. Landlords

Published

4 minute read

Pet ownership in Red Deer is very popular, however, in rental properties it can be a real area of contention between Landlords and Tenants.

First let’s examine what is meant by a no pets clause in a lease, because a lot of tenants think that it simply means no cats or dogs…so they bring in a caged animal like a rabbit or Hamster, Turtle, Snake, Bird or Fish.

Different landlords will look at these other pets with varying degrees of concern but the safest bet is to assume No pets, means No Pets.

As a property manager with a lot of years in the business I have had large aquariums leak while tenants were away on vacation causing substantial damage to the property, including the dead rotten fish.  And we have had small animals escape their cage and chew carpet and electrical wires that caused a fire.

…and more than a few times the tenant did not have insurance to cover the damages.

Next, you have tenants that take on babysitting of pets for others, sometimes this babysitting becomes longer term.

Unfortunately, the length of time the pet is in the house is irrelevant, for most landlords, No Pets means No Pets, not even temporarily.  Some landlords even object to pets visiting for a few hours occasionally.

We have had a tenant get a dog due to security concerns, sorry but a security scare does not give you the right to suddenly get a dog.  NO Pets means NO Pets, not for security, companionship or any other reason.  You can get a security system if you feel the need, wireless please.

This is not to say that all landlords are ruthless tyrants, many will allow for small caged animals or fish, but if your lease has a No pets clause in it, make sure that you get written approval first or you are in breach of your lease and can be evicted over this issue.

In Alberta landlords, can charge a non-refundable pet fee, it can be anything that they want, may be a onetime fee or it may be a monthly fee.  Some provinces do not allow landlords to ban pets such as Ontario, but Alberta does until the Tenancy act that governs Residential tenacities changes.

Why do Landlords have such an aversion to allowing pets:

First is damage to the property.  While 99% of pet owners are great, it is the 1% that can cause a lot of grief, I have had firsthand experience where a single cat has caused damage to an entire home in carpet repairs due to clawing and peeing, damages that far exceeded the security deposit that was held.

Housebreaking new pets can result in lots of damage until the pet is trained.

Second, sometimes future tenants are allergic to animals.  We have lost many potential tenants simply because the moment the prospective tenant walked into the home they started to get stuffy as they were extremely sensitive to the pets that were in prior, it can take a lot of extra specialized cleaning to remedy a house allergen free, it is just easier to not go there in the first place.

Finally, in multi-family such as apartments and townhomes, nothing drives neighbours crazy like a dog barking next door all day long at every slight sound.

For most landlords the risk of the 1% out ways the desire of the 99%

Red Deer Property Rentals is Central Alberta’s Upscale Rental Home Agency.  CLICK HERE to check out our website for your next quality rental home.

Les Brown

More from this author
Business / 7 years ago

Pets Vs. Landlords

Local Business / 8 years ago

Spring Rental Market is Here!

Community / 8 years ago

Why You Need Tenant Insurance

Business

Massive government child-care plan wreaking havoc across Ontario

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

It’s now more than four years since the federal Liberal government pledged $30 billion in spending over five years for $10-per-day national child care, and more than three years since Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government signed a $13.2 billion deal with the federal government to deliver this child-care plan.

Not surprisingly, with massive government funding came massive government control. While demand for child care has increased due to the government subsidies and lower out-of-pocket costs for parents, the plan significantly restricts how child-care centres operate (including what items participating centres may purchase), and crucially, caps the proportion of government funds available to private for-profit providers.

What have families and taxpayers got for this enormous government effort? Widespread child-care shortages across Ontario.

For example, according to the City of Ottawa, the number of children (aged 0 to 5 years) on child-care waitlists has ballooned by more than 300 per cent since 2019, there are significant disparities in affordable child-care access “with nearly half of neighbourhoods underserved, and limited access in suburban and rural areas,” and families face “significantly higher” costs for before-and-after-school care for school-age children.

In addition, Ottawa families find the system “complex and difficult to navigate” and “fewer child care options exist for children with special needs.” And while 42 per cent of surveyed parents need flexible child care (weekends, evenings, part-time care), only one per cent of child-care centres offer these flexible options. These are clearly not encouraging statistics, and show that a government-knows-best approach does not properly anticipate the diverse needs of diverse families.

Moreover, according to the Peel Region’s 2025 pre-budget submission to the federal government (essentially, a list of asks and recommendations), it “has maximized its for-profit allocation, leaving 1,460 for-profit spaces on a waitlist.” In other words, families can’t access $10-per-day child care—the central promise of the plan—because the government has capped the number of for-profit centres.

Similarly, according to Halton Region’s pre-budget submission to the provincial government, “no additional families can be supported with affordable child care” because, under current provincial rules, government funding can only be used to reduce child-care fees for families already in the program.

And according to a March 2025 Oxford County report, the municipality is experiencing a shortage of child-care staff and access challenges for low-income families and children with special needs. The report includes a grim bureaucratic predication that “provincial expansion targets do not reflect anticipated child care demand.”

Child-care access is also a problem provincewide. In Stratford, which has a population of roughly 33,000, the municipal government reports that more than 1,000 children are on a child-care waitlist. Similarly in Port Colborne (population 20,000), the city’s chief administrative officer told city council in April 2025 there were almost 500 children on daycare waitlists at the beginning of the school term. As of the end of last year, Guelph and Wellington County reportedly had a total of 2,569 full-day child-care spaces for children up to age four, versus a waitlist of 4,559 children—in other words, nearly two times as many children on a waitlist compared to the number of child-care spaces.

More examples. In Prince Edward County, population around 26,000, there are more than 400 children waitlisted for licensed daycare. In Kawartha Lakes and Haliburton County, the child-care waitlist is about 1,500 children long and the average wait time is four years. And in St. Mary’s, there are more than 600 children waitlisted for child care, but in recent years town staff have only been able to move 25 to 30 children off the wait list annually.

The numbers speak for themselves. Massive government spending and control over child care has created havoc for Ontario families and made child-care access worse. This cannot be a surprise. Quebec’s child-care system has been largely government controlled for decades, with poor results. Why would Ontario be any different? And how long will Premier Ford allow this debacle to continue before he asks the new prime minister to rethink the child-care policy of his predecessor?

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
Continue Reading

Business

Canada Caves: Carney ditches digital services tax after criticism from Trump

Published on

From The Center Square

By

Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.

Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.

Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.

Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.

Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.

Continue Reading

Trending

X