The Ontario government plans to tackle delays in resolving landlord and tenant disputes, and promised a handful of new tenant protections on evictions are on the way.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The Ontario government has announced plans to tackle extreme delays in resolving landlord and tenant disputes, and promised a handful of new tenant protections on evictions are on the way.
Attorney-General Doug Downey and Steve Clark, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, announced Wednesday that the government would spend $6.5-million for more staffers, including 40 new adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board.
New adjudicators could make a big impact on the board, where applicants for a hearing report waiting anywhere from six to eight months to make their case. According to Tribunals Ontario in 2018, the number of cases unresolved at the end of the year was 14,726, with 79,476 applications resolved. In its most recent annual report for 2021-22 only 61,866 applications were resolved with 32,800 outstanding.
The delays escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic and have exacerbated an already tense relationship between tenants and landlords as rental housing affordability has become worse in lockstep with the growing crisis in housing availability.
“The new influx of resources and staffing will help the board schedule, hear and resolve active and future cases faster because Ontario’s citizens deserve better results,” Mr. Downey told reporters in London, Ont.
Tribunals Ontario says that as of this time last year, there were 147 full-time adjudicators and 189 part-timers, though it’s difficult to say how many actually work on tenant issues. There are a number of adjudicators who were cross-appointed to other bodies such as the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the Licence Appeal Tribunal and the Social Benefits Tribunal, which have experienced their own growing backlogs. If all 40 new adjudicators went to the Landlord and Tenant Board, it would almost double the body’s traditional staffing level.
The government is also proposing to double the fines for illegal evictions to $100,000, and $500,000 for corporations, and set clearer conditions for compensation for tenants affected by “renovictions” or own-use evictions.
Ontario to beef up tenant protections against ‘renovictions’, housing minister says
Opposition NDP’s housing critic, Jessica Bell, said the problems at the Landlord and Tenant Board were part of the government’s failed track record on rental prices, homelessness and evictions.
“For many years the LTB has been the most complained-about tribunal in Ontario,” said Ms. Bell. “It is a chaotic, disorganized and unfair hearing process for tenants and landlords.”
The opposition also expects a long-awaited ombudsman report into the reasons for the backlogs and delays at the board to be released this month.
Harry Fine, who served as an adjudicator from 2001-05, said there was almost no backlog during that time and it was routine for matters to get a hearing within six weeks and then for rulings to be issued within two weeks. Mr. Fine is now a paralegal who works for landlords and tenants before the board.
“How can you get so backlogged that you’re taking a month or six weeks to issue an order? And by the time you’re writing that order – from a hearing six weeks ago – how do you remember anything?” said Mr. Fine.
Those who work in the system agree that the final year of Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government in 2017 is when the backlog started building as adjudicators ending their terms were not reappointed ahead of a scheduled election.
Mr. Fine argued that was followed by months more of delays in appointing new adjudicators by Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government, making things worse. Then the pandemic struck in early 2020 and hearings were suspended for almost six months, adding tens of thousands more cases to the backlog.
“It’s a step in the right direction, but we have been basically lied to in the past,” said Boubacar Bah, who chairs Small Ownership Landlords Ontario Inc., a group with close to 7,000 members he founded to advocate for action during the pandemic when the province banned evictions and shut down the Landlord and Tenant Board for several months.
Mr. Bah said in 2022 before the provincial election and during budget consultations, his group heard from government spokespersons that relief was on the way to address COVID-era issues that were still adding to wait times and which cost some landlords tens of thousands of dollars in rent they were never able to collect.
Tenant advocates are skeptical that the new proposed protections will have much impact.
“They’ve done stuff before to strengthen a tenant’s ability to get compensation when they get evicted in bad faith,” said Ryan Hardy, a staff lawyer with the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario, which is funded by Legal Aid Ontario and provides the Tenant Duty Counsel program to give free legal advice to tenants before the board.
“The problem with that is it still puts the burden on the tenant to enforce: If they get evicted in bad faith, go to the LTB and get a compensation award, they are still evicted … they’ve still lost their home.”