Subletting, Assignment and Additional Occupants in Calgary

The starting distinction matters more than it might seem: Alberta's RTA has clear, specific rules for assignment and sublet, a real consent mechanism with defensible refusal grounds. It says almost nothing, by contrast, about additional occupants and guests as such, and it explicitly doesn't govern how a tenant and the people they bring into the unit treat each other. A landlord expecting the RTA to settle every one of these four scenarios the same way will be disappointed twice: once discovering how much leverage they actually have over an assignment or sublet, and again discovering how little the statute says about an occupant who's simply living there without being on the lease.

Sorting a specific situation into the right one of these four categories is the actual first step, before deciding whether consent is even required.

An assignment transfers the full tenancy agreement to a new tenant. Once approved, the new tenant steps into the original tenant's shoes completely, the lease terms themselves don't change, but the person responsible for them does, and the original tenant is released from further responsibility to the landlord. This is the most complete handoff of the four categories, and it's the one that actually ends the original tenant's exposure.

Section 22 of the RTA requires the tenant to get the landlord's written consent before an assignment can proceed, and that consent can't be withheld unreasonably. Defensible grounds for refusal are specific rather than open-ended: things like poor credit history, insufficient income, negative references, or false information provided by the prospective assignee. A landlord who simply doesn't like the idea, without one of these grounds, is on weaker footing if the tenant escalates the disagreement.

A sublet looks similar on the surface but works completely differently underneath. The original tenant remains fully responsible to the landlord for rent and for compliance with the lease, even though someone else is living there and paying them directly. The subtenant's payment relationship is with the original tenant, not the landlord, and if the subtenant doesn't pay or damages the unit, the landlord's claim still runs against the original tenant, not the subtenant directly.

The same written-consent requirement under section 22 applies here too, with the same "cannot be unreasonably withheld" standard and the same category of defensible refusal grounds. If a landlord doesn't respond to a sublet or assignment request within a reasonable time, the tenant has a real escalation path: applying to the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service for direction.

This is where the RTA's coverage genuinely thins out. An occupant is someone who lives in the unit without having signed the lease or rental agreement themselves. They don't have direct legal standing with the landlord under the RTA, they generally can't bring a dispute to RTDRS in their own right, and their rights and obligations run through their private arrangement with the actual tenant, not through the statute.

This is a fundamentally different situation from assignment or sublet, and the tracker brief's own instruction is worth restating directly: an additional occupant is not the same thing as an assignment, and treating a roommate-style arrangement as if it required the same formal consent process as a full lease transfer overstates what the RTA actually requires. An occupant can become a full leaseholder, but only if the landlord agrees, typically through a written lease amendment, often after the same kind of application or reference check a new tenant would go through.

This is worth stating plainly because it surprises landlords who expect the RTA to be comprehensive: the Act does not address the rights and obligations tenants have toward each other. If two co-tenants or a tenant and an occupant disagree about rent splitting, house rules, or who's responsible for what, that's a private dispute the RTA generally doesn't referee, and it isn't a landlord's role to resolve it either, since the landlord's legal relationship runs to the tenant(s) on the lease, not to whatever internal arrangement they've made.

A written roommate agreement, separate from the lease itself, is the practical tool that fills this gap, but it's a private contract between the occupants, not something the RTA enforces or that a landlord needs to draft or arbitrate.

Unlike some other jurisdictions, Alberta's RTA doesn't set a specific day-count threshold distinguishing a guest from an occupant. Rather than invent a number the statute doesn't provide, the practical distinction is functional: a guest is visiting, someone who doesn't actually live in the unit as their residence, while an occupant has effectively moved in, regardless of whether a specific calendar threshold has been crossed. A visitor who stays occasionally is a guest; someone who's moved their belongings in and is living there full-time has become an occupant, whatever the tenant calls it.

Where this becomes a real issue is when a "guest" situation starts looking like undisclosed occupancy, more people living in the unit than the lease contemplates, without the tenant having gone through the occupant or assignment/sublet conversation at all.