British Columbia Law Institute Proposes New Commercial Tenancy Act

Following a two year project including research and public consultation, the BCLI has released its report about commercial tenancy legislation in British Columbia.  The Report, which is available online at http://www.bcli.org/bclrg/projects/commercial-tenancy-act-reform-project, includes a proposed draft of new legislation. There is no indication if and when this proposal will move forward.

Among others, the Report and the proposed legislation include the following highlights:

• Implied terms into commercial tenancy agreements while maintaining the ability of the parties to eliminate or modify these terms;
• Reversing the presumption with respect to a landlord’s ability to refuse consent to an assignment arbitrarily.  Under the new Act, the presumption would be that the landlord cannot act arbitrarily (although the parties are able to override this provision);
• Provisions to bring commercial lease construction in line with other commercial contracts including imposing an obligation on the landlord to mitigate their loss if a tenant abandons the premises; and
• Providing a new dispute resolution process;
• Addressing issues that arise when a tenant goes into bankruptcy; and
• Removing obsolete provisions.

For more information on commercial leasing issues, please contact Una Gabie at gabie@pushormitchell.com or (250)869-1230.