By Pam Wright
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
It appears Ontario’s Landlord Tenant Board (LTB) is broken.
According to a lengthy report released by provincial ombudsman Paul Dube May 4, a huge backlog of cases has clogged the system, leading to long delays and putting tenants in precarious – sometimes life-threatening – positions.
The report also found that small landlords face financial ruin if they don’t get paid rent or can’t get rid of a problematic tenant,
In the report, which included 61 recommendations, Dube said the present system is “fundamentally failing” to bring justice in a timely manner.
Currently there are 38,000 cases in the queue, which for a tenant can mean a two-year wait. Landlords appear to get their matters heard sooner, in five to eight months, but the report said landlord complaints comprise 90 per cent of the issues brought before the tribunal.
The report is old news to Chatham-Kent Legal Clinic housing stability worker Jeff Wilkins. He’s witnessed plenty of horror stories in regard to the tribunal lag issues leading to many finding themselves on the streets.
“The report is very telling and it’s not surprising at all,” Wilkins told The Voice. “I have tenants who are waiting 18 months for a hearing.”
Wilkins said “most people” associated with the LTB say the hearings should go back to an in-person format, which pre-pandemic could normally be scheduled in a matter of days.
“Even though pre-pandemic, in-person hearings were nowhere perfect, it was much more efficient than it is now,” Wilkins said. “The problem pre-pandemic was that there weren’t enough adjudicators and they are now doubling the number of adjudicators. If they would have done that pre-pandemic with in-person hearings, there would be no backlog.”
A paralegal, Wilkins said that while switching hearings to a virtual format during the pandemic was supposed to help, it had the opposite effect with indigent and mentally challenged tenants unable to scale the digital wall.
Wilkins said he has had more than one client who didn’t have a cellphone trying to access their hearing from a payphone, only to be forced to feed coins into the phone while waiting to get online.
The province has admitted there was already a backlog prior to the pandemic, with 20,000 cases stacked up, which in three years has nearly doubled. Dube said the situation was aggravated by the pandemic, a change in government, procedural inefficiencies – including a lack of trained adjudicators – and two moratoriums on evictions that occurred due to COVID-19.
The ombudsman report was initiated before COVID-19 hit, but was delayed by the pandemic.
Ontario has pledged to hire 40 new adjudicators to help unclog the system, but this has yet to happen.
Wilkins said the title of the report “Administrative Justice Delayed, Fairness Denied,” is appropriate.
