MONTREAL -- Quebec's Human Rights Tribunal has ordered two Montreal landlords to pay $5,000 in moral damages to a man to whom they refused to rent an apartment because one of his children at the time was a baby.
However, the judge rejected the man's request for another $1,500 in punitive damages.
The judgment notes that in March 2015, Abderrahim Taoussi and his wife, parents of children aged 10 months and five and a half years old, were interested in visiting an apartment in a duplex owned by Irina Taranovskaya Tsarevsky and Mikhail Tsarevsky. The owners lived in the other apartment in the same building.
During a telephone conversation, Taoussi told Taranovskaya Tsarevsky the age of his children. He said he then heard nothing back from the co-owner, despite his attempts to speak to her again, until April 5.
On that day, Taranovskaya Tsarevsky told the applicant she could not rent the apartment to him because he had a baby that would cry and that she did not want that.
A few days later, Taoussi filed a complaint with Quebec's Human and Youth Rights Commission. In July, he and his family moved to a new apartment, but he said the location of Irina Taranovskaya Tsarevsky's and Mikhail Tsarevsky's duplex would have better suited the family.
Taoussi explained to the tribunal that the litigation with the two defendants had caused significant stress to his family, as well as financial losses. Taranovskaya Tsarevsky testified that in 2015 her husband was very sick and needed to rest in a peaceful environment.
The court concluded that Taoussi had been discriminated against by Taranovskaya Tsarevsky based on being the parent of young children. As for Mikhail Tsarevsky, the court found that he had been a passive witness to the discriminatory conduct of his wife.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March. 11, 2020.
