This summer my vehicle was broken into while inside the secure underground parking garage of my condo building. I provided both the police and the property management with the details of the incident, including the location, which camera most likely captured it, and the time span during which it could have occurred.

Despite my requests, and requests from Toronto Police, the property management has so far refused to provide the surveillance footage or any information as to who may have perpetrated the break-in.

This is a common theme among tenants and landlords. Many have encountered reluctance, or outright refusal, to provide CCTV footage, even if the request comes from the police investigating a specific incident. Most people who have had belongings stolen or a vehicle burglarized have experienced the same frustrating scenario: going to the condo/apartment management office to ask for footage, only to be told that they're unable to provide it due to some "policy" or due to vague "privacy" concerns.

Why do landlords or superintendents opt to install surveillance systems if they never intend to provide it to anyone? Not even to their own tenants or authorities trying to investigate a crime? Is it just security theatre, or some bonus feature to entice buyers and renters? If the issue is some technical limitation making footage retrieval difficult, then they should remove cameras from the premises.

“Privacy” is often used as a blanket justification for not cooperating, but this is a specious, bad faith argument. No reasonable person expects absolute privacy in common-access areas of a property. This includes:

• parking garages
• lobbies
• mail rooms
• building entrances
• bicycle rooms
• storage locker areas
• common amenity areas

With the advent of better quality, high capacity, relatively inexpensive surveillance systems for houses and larger dwellings, the laws and regulations surrounding their use haven’t caught up with reality.

The decision by any landlord or property manager to employ security video monitoring of a residential property should entail certain responsibilities. Up to now, those using such technologies have been able to get away with making their own rules on its use, often treating footage as their own property when, in essence, the recordings belong to the tenants. The system exists for their security, their safety, their peace of mind, and to protect their home. No one who operates these systems should be able to gate-keep it, or decide on a whim to block access to it.

That’s why I’m proposing a tenant “Right to Footage” amendment for Ontario’s Residential Tenancies Act.

With digital video surveillance of public and private property being ubiquitous in the 21st century, the time is long overdue to clarify and codify the following:

• how surveillance footage is to be used
• who has the right to request footage
• to settle any privacy concerns once and for all

What exists currently is a patchwork of inconsistent policies, nonsensical assertions about protecting privacy, and a general unwillingness among the custodians of residential CCTV systems to respond to legitimate requests by tenants or law enforcement. There is a growing need to preempt future legal, regulatory, and privacy issues surrounding the ever-increasing presence of private property surveillance.

In essence, the proposal is an amendment that would compel a landlord, superintendent, or property manager to provide requested surveillance footage, for a specified period of time, in the following circumstances:

• A police request for CCTV footage on behalf of a tenant, as part of an open investigation, without the need for a court order.
• A tenant/occupant request for CCTV footage for the purposes of identifying the cause of assault, theft, property damage, or another crime (or suspected crime) perpetrated against the requesting tenant or their property (bicycle, parked vehicle, delivered packages, etc.)

Responding to the following types of requests would not be compelled:

• A police request for CCTV footage for which a case number or tenant information isn’t provided.
• A tenant/occupant request for CCTV footage for which no specific purpose is provided or which can be reasonably considered frivolous.

The following would also be required:

• A register of requests accessible to all tenants, occupants, landlords, property managers, and superintendents of the property in question. This would ensure transparency and prevent abuse of the system.
• A backup of all CCTV surveillance feeds spanning no less than 90 days. Allowances for older/less-capable systems to be grandfathered-in and a transitioning period would make sense.
• A system for submitting requests for CCTV footage that is easily-accessible by occupants/tenants of a property. This could be an email address, a paper form, a digital form, or some other means. A reasonable, nominal fee to process requests could be permitted (for cloud storage, USB sticks, etc.)
• The Ontario Residential Tenancies Act already codifies a landlord’s responsibilities in many areas including changing locks, harassment, noise, privacy, housekeeping, repairs, notice of entry, and evictions, among other things. This would simply ensure that the rules around surveillance and tenant rights are clearly spelled out, and would ensure a consistent use and distribution of CCTV across the board, instead of the current free-for-all that favours property owners and managers and severely disadvantages tenants.

You might ask: why allow not only police, but also tenants, to access footage? There are many reasons:

• One of the main, and most basic reasons, is that the police are busy. They have a long backlog of cases to deal with, and may never even get to your case if it's not deemed "high-priority" enough.
• The tenant may need footage for an insurance claim, medical diagnosis (in cases of assaults, slips and falls, car accidents, etc.), or for future civil and legal disputes.
• Footage acquired by a tenant could help prevent overuse of police resources. For example: someone could go through the footage in advance and identify key moments beforehand, saving hours of police time sifting through video.

In my specific case, I am a video editor. I could easily scrub through hundreds of hours of footage and slice out/time stamp precisely where and when something happened. I could also quickly identify if someone stealing items or causing harm happens to be another tenant, or even a building employee. In any case, someone could then provide still images to other tenants to stay on the lookout, without violating the privacy of other people that live in the building.

It is extremely easy to set up legal guardrails against abuse, privacy violations, and police overreach. The simple checks-and-balances described here would prevent any sort of dystopian police-state surveillance operations. These basic safeguards would also prevent nosy tenants from simply spying on their neighbours. You would need a reason to get the footage, and nobody would have blanket access to reams of video or access to live feeds.

To make it clear:

• police would not have blanket access to footage. They would need a tenant involved and actively requesting the footage. A case number and incident details would need to be provided.
• tenants would not have blanket access to footage. There would not be rampant "spying" on other occupants or demanding months of footage out of general curiosity. A legitimate safety or property damage concern would need to be provided.

While this may seem like a trivial concern to some, it most certainly isn't. With more cameras popping up in more places every day, this particular issue will continue to snowball, stemming off into disputes, lawsuits, court cases, and unsolved crimes. The message to landlords and property managers must be clear: if you want the right to monitor and record tenants in common areas, the tenants have an equal right to request the footage, provided their reason is legitimate.

Video surveillance isn't going away, but at least we can democratize its use and ensure that it's actually used in a way that helps the public. If the cameras in a residential building aren’t there to protect and benefit the tenants, who are they there for?