Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and whether s. 5(d)(i) exempts accommodations in facilities allegedly connected to the provincial health system
• Interpretation of “facility that is designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act” and whether organizational status as a “health care organization” suffices without a specific facility designation
• Jurisdiction of the Residential Tenancies Office to hear the tenant’s compensation claim, hinging on whether the landlord’s premises are exempt from the Act
• Application of appellate standards of review post-Vavilov, specifically correctness for questions of law and jurisdiction on a statutory appeal from an administrative decision-maker
• Use of legislative history (Hansard) and the “modern principle” of statutory interpretation to reconcile text, context, and purpose without overriding clear statutory wording
• Admissibility of new affidavit evidence on a s. 72(1) statutory appeal and the limitation of such appeals to the record before the hearing officer

Facts and statutory background

Alista Patterson was a tenant of Crocus Co-operative Supported Housing in a facility located at 126 Avenue W South in Saskatoon. She brought an application to the Office of Residential Tenancies (ORT) under The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, seeking compensation in relation to her tenancy. The landlord resisted the ORT’s jurisdiction, arguing that the premises fell within a statutory exemption that would remove them from the scope of the Act. The dispute turned not on the factual details of her tenancy or the alleged wrongs, but on whether the ORT legally had authority to adjudicate her claim.

The key statutory provision was s. 5(d)(i) of The Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, which provides that the Act “does not apply to” living accommodation “in a hospital, health centre, addiction treatment centre, special-care home, residential treatment centre or other facility that is designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act.” The landlord’s position was that, because it appears as a “health care organization” in The Provincial Health Authority Administration Regulations, its facility should be treated as a “facility that is designated” under The Provincial Health Authority Act. If that reading were accepted, the tenancy would be exempt from the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, and the ORT could not entertain the tenant’s claim.

The Provincial Health Authority Act itself sets up a distinct scheme for designating “facilities.” Under s. 9-5(1)(g)(i), the Lieutenant Governor in Council establishes categories of facilities for designation, and s. 2-9 authorizes the minister to designate all or part of a facility operated by a health services entity as one of those prescribed categories. The Facility Designation Regulations then define “designated” as designated by the minister under s. 2-9, create categories such as “hospital,” “health centre,” and “residential treatment centre,” and require the minister to publish in Part I of The Saskatchewan Gazette a list of all designated facilities, their titles, categories and effective dates. It is this health-facility designation framework that s. 5(d)(i) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 cross-references when it exempts living accommodation “in a…facility that is designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act.”

The hearing officer’s decision

The hearing officer first looked to s. 5(d)(i) and accepted that Crocus Co-operative Supported Housing is identified as a “health care organization” in the Provincial Health Authority Administration Regulations. He acknowledged that the statutory carve-out speaks of a “facility that is designated” and that the tenant argued the word “designated” must be read in conjunction with the formal designation process set out in the Facility Designation Regulations—namely, ministerial designation under the Provincial Health Authority Act and listing in The Saskatchewan Gazette.

The tenant’s effective argument, as summarized in the decision, was that either the landlord’s premises fit within one of the designated facility categories listed in the Facility Designation Regulations and then must be formally designated to be exempt, or, if they did not fit, they were not within the exemption at all. In either case, an actual act of designation by the minister was required to invoke s. 5(d)(i), and there was no evidence of such designation for 126 Avenue W South.

The hearing officer, however, was not persuaded that s. 5(d)(i) was confined to facilities formally designated under the specific machinery of the health-facility regime. He treated the list in s. 5(d) as non-exhaustive and relied on the “ordinary meaning” of “facility” and “designated,” rather than the more technical meanings used in the Provincial Health Authority Act and its regulations. Reasoning that the landlord had been “designated” in some form under that Act by being listed as a health care organization, he concluded that the premises fell within the exemption in s. 5(d)(i). On that basis he ruled that the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 did not apply and that he lacked jurisdiction to consider the tenant’s compensation claim.

Standard of review and appellate framework

The tenant appealed to the King’s Bench under s. 72(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006. Both parties accepted, and the court confirmed, that the applicable standard of review was correctness for this jurisdictional question. Following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, where legislatures create a statutory appeal from an administrative decision, courts are to apply ordinary appellate standards: correctness for questions of law, including statutory interpretation and jurisdiction, and palpable and overriding error for questions of fact or mixed fact and law with no readily extricable legal error. This approach had already been endorsed in Saskatchewan decisions like Silzer v Saskatchewan Government Insurance and Lansdowne Equity Ventures Ltd. v Cove Communities Inc., and it streamlined the analysis by avoiding pre-Vavilov debates about the tribunal’s relative expertise.

The judge also noted that, even under the older framework, correctness would still have applied here because the interpretive issue extended beyond the hearing officer’s home statute and implicated the broader regime under the Provincial Health Authority Act, with potential consequences outside the residential tenancies sphere. That reinforced the view that no deference was owed to the hearing officer on the legal question of jurisdiction.

Affidavit evidence on appeal

An evidentiary issue arose when the landlord sought to file an affidavit explaining its operations and the circumstances of the tenancy. The court declined to admit this new evidence. On a s. 72 appeal, the court emphasized, the general rule is that the appeal proceeds on the existing record from the tribunal below; parties are not permitted to bolster their case by introducing fresh sworn evidence, save for narrow exceptions such as establishing a jurisdictional defect like lack of service. Previous authorities, including Williams v Elite Property Management Ltd., had reinforced that appeals from the ORT are ordinarily confined to the materials before the hearing officer. In this case, the affidavit was neither necessary to resolve the jurisdictional issue nor truly new, as it largely duplicated what was already in the record. It was therefore rejected.

Statutory interpretation of the tenancy exemption

The core of the appellate decision lay in the interpretation of s. 5(d)(i) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 and its cross-reference to the Provincial Health Authority Act. The court approached the language using the “modern principle” of statutory interpretation, as articulated in Rizzo & Rizzo Shoes Ltd. (Re) and codified in The Legislation Act: words must be read in their entire context, in their grammatical and ordinary sense, harmoniously with the scheme and object of the Act and the legislature’s intent. A remedial and liberal interpretation is encouraged, but courts must not ignore clear text in the name of perceived purpose.

Applying that framework, the judge held that “designated” in s. 5(d)(i) has an ordinary meaning that involves an active, formal choice by an authorized decision-maker. Dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster and the Cambridge Dictionary support a common understanding of “designate” as to indicate and set apart for a specific purpose or to choose someone or something officially for a particular role. In the statutory context, this ordinary meaning aligns closely with what the Provincial Health Authority Act itself prescribes: the minister may designate all or part of a facility as one of the prescribed categories, and the consequent list of designated facilities is then published in The Saskatchewan Gazette.

The court canvassed the health-facility regulatory scheme to illustrate how this designation is implemented. The Facility Designation Regulations explicitly define “designated” as “designated by the minister pursuant to section 2-9 of the Act” and require the minister to maintain and publish a list of all such facilities, including their categories and effective dates. That list, which contains hundreds of facilities across Saskatchewan, is the authoritative record of which premises are “designated” facilities under the Provincial Health Authority Act.

The landlord urged a broader, purpose-driven reading, relying on Hansard statements by the Minister of Justice when the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 was introduced. The minister had explained that certain forms of accommodation, including housing provided by organizations like the Salvation Army and situations where tenants receive care or treatment from a landlord, were intended to be excluded from the Act. The landlord argued that this legislative intent showed that what mattered was the nature of the organization and its provision of care, not a formal act of designation for a particular building. If the organization was recognized under the health-care statutory framework, its facilities should be treated as covered by s. 5(d)(i).

The court rejected that submission on two central grounds. First, the text of s. 5(d)(i) is directed to “living accommodation…in a…facility that is designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act,” not to organizations per se. The focus is on whether a facility has been designated, not on the status of the operating entity. Second, while Hansard may illuminate general legislative purpose, it cannot be used to override clear, carefully constructed statutory cross-references and procedural requirements. The minister’s remarks were high-level and did not purport to alter or simplify the formal designation mechanism established in the Provincial Health Authority Act and its regulations.

On a proper reading, the judge concluded, the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 exempts only those living accommodations that are physically located in facilities that have been expressly designated by the minister under s. 2-9 of the Provincial Health Authority Act and appear on the official list in The Saskatchewan Gazette. Being listed as a “health care organization” in a separate set of regulations is not equivalent to designation of a specific facility. There is a critical legal and practical distinction between recognizing an entity as a health-care organization and designating particular premises as a hospital, health centre, residential treatment centre, or other prescribed facility category.

Outcome of the appeal and practical implications

Having reviewed the published list of designated facilities, the court found that the landlord’s building at 126 Avenue W South in Saskatoon did not appear anywhere on that list. In other words, the premises where Ms. Patterson rented were not a “facility that is designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act.” As a result, s. 5(d)(i) of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 did not apply to exempt that living accommodation from the Act. Section 3 of the Act therefore governed, making clear that, notwithstanding any other statute and subject only to the specified exemptions, the Act applies to tenancy agreements, rental units and other residential property.

On that basis, the hearing officer’s refusal of jurisdiction was held to be incorrect. The judge added that, even if a reasonableness standard had been applicable, the outcome would have been the same. It was unreasonable to treat the landlord’s status as a health care organization as if it automatically converted its premises into a designated facility under the Provincial Health Authority Act, especially when the governing legislation and regulations clearly tie the exemption to a specific ministerial designation process and a publicly maintained list of designated facilities.

The court therefore allowed the appeal, set aside the hearing officer’s decision, and remitted the matter to the Office of Residential Tenancies for a new hearing on the merits of the tenant’s compensation claim. The ORT must now determine, under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, whether Ms. Patterson is entitled to any monetary or other relief arising from her tenancy. The appellate judgment does not resolve the underlying factual dispute or quantify any damages; it deals solely with jurisdiction and the scope of the statutory exemption.

In terms of litigation success and financial outcome, the successful party on this appeal is the tenant, Alista Patterson, whose position that the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 applies to her tenancy was accepted. No damages, compensation, or other monetary relief were awarded at this stage, and the court expressly ordered that each party bear her or its own costs of the appeal. Accordingly, the total monetary amount ordered in favour of the successful party in this decision is nil, and any future monetary award will depend on the result of the rehearing before the Office of Residential Tenancies, which cannot be determined from this judgment.