SASKATOON -- A Saskatoon landlord says the province’s moratorium to protect tenants is putting him in a financial mess.

The Office of Residential Tenancies has stopped accepting eviction applications since March.

Boyd Godfrey said he has a tenant who is over $10,000 in arrears.

The pandemic plan wasn’t thought out and is flawed, according to Godfrey.

“They shouldn’t have put the obligation to pay on the landlords. It’s something they should have financed themselves,” Godfrey told CTV News.

He claims the tenant hasn’t paid rent or utilities since February and is telling his landlord that he doesn’t have to pay now per the new government rules.

Godfrey said the tenant, who lives in a three-bedroom upstairs suite, has always been late on rent, but it got really bad at the start of 2020.

He was in the process of evicting him when the moratorium came into place.

Godfrey has been a landlord for more than eight years and said he and his wife started being landlords to help with their retirement - but this problem is eating away at that.

Justice Minister Don Morgan said the Office of the Residential Tenancies is working on a plan to end the moratorium in the near future - possibly in the summer.

Godfrey said there must be a plan to compensate small landlords like him who will be facing huge deficits if tenants don’t pay.