This bill amends Nova Scotia’s Residential Tenancies Act to put statutory duties on landlords to provide functioning carbon monoxide alarms and to run periodic radon testing in every residential rental unit. It also requires landlords to notify tenants of test results, retain testing and mitigation records, and to carry out mitigation where testing shows elevated radon.
The proposal addresses two invisible indoor hazards by shifting responsibility for detection, documentation and mitigation onto landlords while giving the Minister regulatory authority to set technical standards. The change creates compliance obligations for property owners and managers, plus a set of operational questions for regulators, service providers and housing operators to resolve.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires landlords to install, maintain and test carbon monoxide alarms per manufacturers’ instructions and regulatory standards, and forbids leasing premises that don’t comply. It also mandates periodic radon testing, tenant notification of results, post‑mitigation re‑testing, and the retention of radon and mitigation records for a prolonged period.
Who It Affects
Owners and managers of residential rental units across Nova Scotia — from single‑unit landlords to multi‑unit residential buildings — plus radon testing and mitigation service providers, property insurers and public health bodies that will use those results. Tenants gain formalized rights to receive test results and to insist on mitigation where required.
Why It Matters
The bill moves basic indoor‑air safety from guidance to legally enforceable obligations, standardizing practices that are now patchwork across the province. That change will shape capital planning, lease procedures and the market for testing/mitigation services while giving tenants clearer documentation they can use in disputes about habitability.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act adds two new duties to the Residential Tenancies Act: one focused on carbon monoxide alarms and the other on radon testing and mitigation. For carbon monoxide, the bill makes the landlord responsible for making sure every rental unit contains at least one working alarm, installed and maintained according to manufacturer instructions and whatever the regulations set.
Tenants are explicitly required to notify landlords if an alarm stops working and are forbidden from disabling or removing required alarms. The landlord is not permitted to enter into a tenancy unless the unit complies with these alarm rules.
On radon, the Act builds a process: landlords must have tests carried out to document indoor radon concentrations, provide results to tenants, keep an auditable record of the testing and any mitigation work, and arrange for follow‑up testing after mitigation. The regulations are expected to fill in most technical details — which devices may be used, how long tests must run, device placement, and who is qualified to test or mitigate — so implementation depends heavily on the rulemaking that follows.The bill also protects tenants from contract‑level evasion by declaring that obligations under the radon provisions cannot be waived or shifted to tenants through leases.
It creates transitional windows for existing tenancies to come into compliance and specifies that particular triggers (for example, after renovations or mitigation) require additional testing. Overall, the Act turns a set of recommended safety practices into mandatory landlord duties, while leaving the technical contours to regulations and administrative practice.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires a radon test for every rental unit at least once every five years.
A radon test must run for not less than ninety‑one consecutive days.
If a test shows an average radon concentration of 200 Bq/m³ or greater, the landlord must complete mitigation and aim to reduce levels below 200 Bq/m³ within six months of receiving the result.
Landlords must retain radon test results, dates, device locations, mitigation records and post‑mitigation results for at least ten years.
A landlord must ensure each rental contains at least one functioning carbon monoxide alarm and may not enter into a new tenancy unless the premises comply with the alarm requirements.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Carbon‑monoxide alarms — installation, maintenance and tenant duties
This provision makes landlords legally responsible for providing functioning carbon monoxide alarms and keeping them in working order for the duration of a tenancy. It places the installation and maintenance obligations on landlords (installation must follow manufacturer instructions and regulations), requires testing at the start of a tenancy and at times set out in regulation, and creates a tenant duty to report defects and to avoid disabling alarms. Practically, owners will need systems to track alarm inventory, battery replacement and remedial repairs; property managers should update check‑in/check‑out procedures and move‑in inspections to document compliance.
Radon testing, mitigation trigger and post‑mitigation testing
This section establishes a repeatable testing‑and‑mitigation regime for indoor radon: landlords must arrange tests that meet regulatory specifications, notify tenants of results, and carry out mitigation where a specified concentration threshold is exceeded — followed by post‑mitigation testing. It also requires landlords to keep detailed records usable for tenant requests or regulatory review. Because the Act ties mitigation obligations to measured results, landlords will need access to qualified testers and mitigators and to operational processes for scheduling, access, and post‑work verification.
Delegation to regulations for technical standards and multi‑unit testing rules
The bill gives the Minister explicit authority to set technical requirements by regulation: device standards for CO alarms, procedures and device types for radon testing, qualifications for testers and mitigators, and rules for representative testing in multi‑unit buildings. Those regulatory choices will determine implementation details such as whether a single building‑level test can satisfy unit‑level requirements, what certifications service providers must hold, and how device placement must be documented.
Compliance windows and grandfathering for recent tests
Transitional provisions give landlords a fixed period after the coming‑into‑force date to bring existing tenancies into compliance with alarm requirements and to complete an initial radon test, while treating qualifying recent radon tests as meeting the new requirement if they meet standards set in the Act. Where an older test shows elevated radon and no mitigation has been done, the landlord must still carry out mitigation within a shortened window. These timelines will affect capital planning and may concentrate demand for testing and mitigation services immediately after proclamation.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Long‑term tenants in poorly ventilated or older homes — they gain legally enforceable detection and remediation rights for two invisible hazards that current practice often overlooks.
- Public health authorities — standardized reporting and ten‑year record retention creates a consistent data stream for surveillance, risk mapping and targeted interventions.
- Professional radon testers and mitigation contractors — the law creates predictable, recurring demand for certified testing and mitigation services across the rental market.
- Property managers of larger portfolios — firms with compliance systems can scale processes and avoid tenant disputes by documenting work and notifications.
Who Bears the Cost
- Individual and small landlords — they face upfront costs to install and maintain alarms, pay for multi‑month radon tests, and finance mitigation work where levels are high, with uncertain ability to pass costs to tenants.
- Non‑profit and municipal housing providers with aging stock — mitigation and testing on a large scale can be capital‑intensive and require programmatic budgeting.
- Provincial regulators and inspection staff — while the bill delegates technical details to regulation, agencies will need to develop standards, certification schemes and compliance guidance, creating administrative workload.
- Tenants in buildings where landlords delay compliance — tenants may shoulder short‑term inconvenience (access for testing/mitigation) and, in some cases, temporary relocation if mitigation requires work that materially affects habitability.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between protecting tenants from invisible, long‑term health risks by placing clear, enforceable detection and remediation duties on landlords, and the practical and financial burden those duties impose on property owners and public agencies — a trade‑off that will hinge on how technical standards, sampling rules and enforcement mechanisms are written and funded.
The Act sets a clear legal framework but pushes almost all technical detail to regulation. That delegation is standard, but it means the law’s practical reach will depend on forthcoming rules about device types, certified personnel, representative testing in multi‑unit buildings and acceptable testing protocols.
Where the regulations allow representative building‑level testing, some individual units could avoid direct testing even though unit‑level concentrations vary with floor, ventilation and occupant behaviour. Regulators will need to balance cost‑effective sampling against the risk of under‑detecting high concentrations in specific units.
The bill requires mitigation when results exceed a specified threshold and imposes short deadlines for remediation and post‑mitigation testing, but it does not identify enforcement tools or financial mechanisms. That gap raises questions about who ultimately pays for mitigation in multi‑unit buildings, how disputes will be handled if landlords claim cost or feasibility constraints, and whether insurers or lenders will adjust terms in response.
Additionally, the operational burden of multi‑month radon tests (device procurement, placement, tenant cooperation, winter vs. summer testing windows) and the potential scarcity of certified mitigators could make complying within the prescribed timelines difficult in practice.
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