Hi J.P.
For the second part of your question, Maxima and Voyager9 were right.
As for the first part of your question, to be able to kick out your tenants, you will have to present a case in front of ''La Régie du Logement'' to obtain a cancellation of the lease. If the judgement is in your favour, go a head, kick them out of there but to be able to get that judgement, you better have a dam good reason. You better verify with them how to proceed before doing anything. Unless you drive your tenants completly creazy and they wrote you a lettre telling you that they won't renew their lease at the end of the contract and they will leaving the appt. on such date but, I wont recommand you to do that because they can do a lot of dammages to your appt and it will cost you more to try to get a hold on them after.
If you obtain that judgement, you can always do some renovations to the appt and then, you will be able to increase the monthly rent because, if a potential tenant bring the fact that you have increase the rent higher than the % allowed, you can always claim that it is not the same appt as it was before. La Régie will ask you to present all your invoices to proof that you have actually made those renovations and it's better not be that you have only change a carpet.
As for the expenses, you will have 2 way to claim them to the gvmt.
1st, as Maxima describe it, 0 revenus less x$ of expenses x 50% = y$ loss x your income tax rate and you declare the lost at the end of the year.
2nd,(depending of your financial situation) you don't claim the expenses for the renovations but you increase the cost of the building by that amount. When you will sell the building, you will pay less capital gain that you will do. As exemple, let say you have bought the building in 2000 for 100,000$ and you sell it in 2010 for 200,000$ for a total gain of 100,000$. Now, if you are doing renovations for, let say 20k and not claiming that expense on your income tax report, you will increase the cost of the building to 120,000 so it will bring down the capital gain to 80k. When you will do your income tax report at that period, you will say :
80k capital gain x 50% because you were living in 1 apt of the duplex (I presume it's a duplex) = 40k x 50% because half of the capital gain is taxable= 20k taxable at your income tax rate at the time.
I hope I was able to help you out.
CMA