A request to sublet or assign is a timed request. Your province decides how long you have to answer, what you may charge to look into it, and what happens if you say nothing. Most of the risk sits in the first two days.
Assignment and sublet are different arrangements
An assignment moves the tenancy to a new person. The incoming tenant takes over the existing agreement, and under section 95 of Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act it continues on the same terms and conditions. The outgoing tenant stays liable for breaches before the assignment. The new tenant carries everything after it.
A sublet keeps the original tenant in place. They hand occupancy to a subtenant for a period ending before their own tenancy ends, and stay liable to you for rent and damage the whole time. Your relationship is still with them, not the person in the unit. Settle which arrangement you are being asked for before you answer, because it decides who you chase when something goes wrong.
Step 1: Date-stamp the request
Write down the day the request reached you. Every deadline counts from that date, and nothing arrives to tell you it has started.
- Ontario: if you do not respond within seven days, the tenant gains the right to end the tenancy on short notice. They have 30 days from the request to serve it, and the notice they owe you is the lesser of what the Act normally requires and 30 days.
- Alberta: if you do not respond within 14 days of receiving the request, section 22 of the Residential Tenancies Act deems you to have consented. Silence is a yes, and it binds you to a person you never assessed.
- British Columbia: no statutory response clock, but section 34 requires your consent in writing, and where a fixed term has six months or more left to run you cannot withhold it unreasonably.
Ontario's seven days catches the most people. The Act does not require the request to be in writing, so a conversation at the mailboxes can start the clock without anything landing in your inbox.
Step 2: Pin down what is being asked
Reply the day it lands. Ask for four things: which arrangement they want, the name of the proposed person, the start date, and for a sublet, the date the subtenancy ends.
Ontario splits requests into two kinds. A general request asks whether you will allow an assignment at all. A specific request asks you to approve a named assignee. You can refuse either one outright. What you cannot do is arbitrarily or unreasonably refuse the named person once you have agreed to the idea of an assignment.
Acknowledging a request is not consenting to it, and it is not a decision either. Keep the clock running until you have said yes or no.
Step 3: Check what you are allowed to charge
Easy to get wrong, because a credit check feels like a cost someone else should cover.
- Ontario: only your reasonable out-of-pocket expenses in giving consent, for both assignment and sublet. That means money you spent, such as a credit report you paid for. A flat administration fee set in advance is not an out-of-pocket expense.
- Alberta: nothing. Section 22(6) bars a fee or other consideration for giving consent.
- British Columbia: nothing. Section 34(3) bars charging a tenant anything for considering, investigating or consenting.
Step 4: Screen the incoming person the way you screen everyone
All three provinces limit refusal. Ontario bars arbitrary or unreasonable refusal of a named assignee, and the same for a subtenant. Alberta requires reasonable grounds. British Columbia bars unreasonable withholding on a fixed term with six months or more remaining.
Reasonable means criteria you had before the request arrived: ability to pay, rental references, identity verification, occupancy standards. Run the same check you run on any applicant, in the same order, and keep what comes back. A refusal is only as good as the file behind it.
An Ontario tenant who thinks you withheld consent unreasonably can apply to the Landlord and Tenant Board on Form A2 within one year. The Board can authorize the assignment over your objection, order an abatement of rent, or terminate the tenancy.
Step 5: Answer in writing, with reasons
Alberta requires written reasons for a refusal. Ontario and British Columbia do not spell that out, and you should write them anyway. Reasons recorded on the day are defensible. Reasons reconstructed from memory a year later, in front of an adjudicator, are not.
Keep the answer narrow: which arrangement, what you decided, what it rests on, and the date. If you consent, name the person and the start date, so nobody argues later about who was approved.
What an assignment does to your rent
In Ontario, an assignment is not a new tenancy. The agreement continues unchanged, so the rent does too. Lawful rent for a new tenant under a new tenancy agreement is whatever you first charge, which means a unit that turns over can be repriced and a unit that is assigned cannot.
Know that number before you answer. It is not a lawful reason to refuse a qualified assignee, and treating it as one is how landlords end up at a hearing. What it tells you is what the honest alternative looks like. If the outgoing tenant would rather end the tenancy by mutual agreement and you would rather they did, both sides gain. Keep that conversation separate from the one about consent.
If someone has already moved in
If a tenant transfers occupancy without an authorized assignment or sublet, Ontario treats it as unauthorized occupancy. You can apply to the Board to end the tenancy and evict both the tenant and the occupant, and ask for compensation for use of the unit. The window is 60 days from the day you discover it, and discovery is a slippery date to argue about. Note it the moment you have reason to believe someone new is living there.
Set this up before the next request
- Write a saved reply that acknowledges the request the day it arrives and asks for the four details above.
- Add a calendar rule that fires well inside the statutory window: five days in Ontario, ten in Alberta.
- Put your screening criteria in a document you can hand to someone, so a refusal points at a standard rather than a feeling.
None of this takes long. It takes being ready, because the version where you lose is the one where a request sits unread over a long weekend and the law answers for you.