The Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board holds regular meetings for “stakeholders,” which are generally those who use the LTB’s systems regularly such as paralegals. Over time, more and more landlords have become aware of this and are attending these hearings. We don’t generally see adjudicators themselves becoming active in these calls, probably to keep their “judicial independence”.
A meeting is generally laid out like this: The LTB provides updates on how things are progressing, and then stakeholders get to ask questions, with most of them revolving around the technical and mundane. The LTB, in the thick of addressing adjournments and Above Guideline Increases (AGIs), appears to be having a challenge with getting things done on time and to their own service standards.
This meeting, held November 30, 2022, at 3:00p.m. for a planned hour and a half was attended by almost 300 participants. More than we remember being in previous meetings, the LTB seemed to have several updates they wanted to share this evening.
Sean Weir – Executive Chair · Tribunals Ontario
“When I got here a couple years ago, we were short on adjudicators and getting to the full complement was immediately my priority. At tribunals Ontario, we now have 332 adjudicators, which is the highest number ever.”
“At the LTB we have 83 adjudicators.. but we’re not stopping there” “We’ve made consultations with the government which will result in more adjudicators coming on board in early 2023” He goes on to say, “We are now a completely digital organization. All tribunals are conducted through Zoom.”
Weir then talks about backlog elimination and that it’s his “top priority today”.
Sean says, “Last fiscal year we received 61,500 applications at the LTB and we resolved and closed 61,800.” In fact, on the surface, this might suggest that they maintained parity in cases, but the clear sense is that hearing at the LTB is more delayed a year on. Sure, it’s something all landlords knew, but the admissions from the LTB’s Charmain they’ve made no meaningful progress – so far – is still alarming to hear. Then the executive does a time jump back to COVID: “We dug a deep hole during the pandemic. We’ve lost 25,000 hearings. (…) To adapt to the realities of the pandemic we also had to completely change our operating procedures from seven regional offices to a single cohesive province-wide entity and move from a paper-based in-person system to a digital system with virtual hearings. We changed almost everything we do. There was no time for advanced planning or preparation.”
He goes on to say, “I’m confident we’re turning the corner and we’re going to see an improvement in 2023 getting out of our old SEAMORE system and getting completely into our new TOP (Tribunal Ontario Portal) system,”
Harry Gousopoulos Executive Director, Tribunals Ontario.
More on the portal. He says that they “launched the portal in December of 2021 and we have gradually been phasing in functionality and features over the past year. I’m pleased to announce we’re nearing the end of our implementation process.”
Harry then mentions that “on December the 8th, they’ll be introducing four more forms that application scan file online,” more on those below. Also, the “Last major piece of functionality, a new self-scheduling feature.”
He says that a “ton of time and effort has gone into this project,” likely to the detriment of hearing and order processing times. He then says, “The system is working, and working well.”
Mira Gamsa, Director of Operations Tribunals Ontario
Mira Gamsa takes over to discuss additional forms:
The LTB will add these new forms:
- The L3 – (application to End a Tenancy – tenant Gave Notice or Agreed to Terminate the Tenancy)
- The L4 – (Application to End a Tenancy and Evict a Tenant – Tenant Failed to Meet the Condition of a Settlement or Order)
- The L10 – (Application to Collect Money a Former Tenant Owes)
- The C1 – (Application to End the Occupancy and Evict the member Based on Non-Payment of Regular Monthly Housing Charges and to Collect the Housing Charges that the Co-op Member Owes).
She then talks about self-scheduling options. This feature will allow applicants to pick their hearing date in the system. The plan is to soft-launch this for L1 and L2 applications. Adjournments won’t be included in this launch in the beginning, only new matters. This feature needs to be enabled on the back end by the LTB.
At minute 11:31 a shocking break into the meeting, someone with a screen name “Perell Laquarius Brown” enabled audio and video and appeared to be doing “sexual acts” to the camera. This person had also set what looked like a flag as a background image. This practice is what’s called “zoom bombing,” and it left the entire Zoom call aghast and silent for a number of seconds.
Eventually, Mira gained her composure and continued on the additional forms looking visibly shocked.
At minutes 17:30, a technician shared his screen and started a demo of the coming self-scheduling tools.
Lindiwe Bridgwater, Acting Registar Tribunal Ontario
Lindiwe Bridgwater took over to talk about service delivery
Dawn Sullivan continued: “expected in the January to March 2023 timeframe the LTB will change the block sizes to avoid adjournments. Continuing to prioritize urgent matters. New adjudicators coming on board in the new year.”
Dawn talked about an early 2023 start date for Evening and Weekend hearings. These hearings will be run primarily by part-time members. “We started doing this and we will schedule the matters if the parties consent.” – “Everybody was happy with it.”
“Going forward, we’d like to extend this to urgent blocks. “We are projecting we would start this in early 2023.” Naturally, many landlords will welcome the LTB’s move to hold hearings during evening s and weekends. This move, coupled with daytime hearings running at full speed have the potential to put a serious dent in the current backlogs, but we’re not there yet.
She talked about the strategy in place as far as service delivery. They sometimes give adjudicators time off to write out orders. Smaller hearing blocks are giving adjudicators fewer orders to write. “We have seen a 30% reduction in outstanding orders since 2022. (…) We are very aware about the delays,”
Harry returned to talk about Access to Justice. “We are strongly of the view that digital first enhances access to justice.” Clearly with 10-month delays, that’s not happening. “ At timestamp 33:20 – a user breaks in with what sounds like reggae music.
Then a woman named Kristie chastised the Board for letting a sexually explicit video happen and not address it immediately. She says that people should be given a break to collect themselves. She demanded to know “the policy to deal with this stuff” – Sen Weir returns to say, “I’m not sure we can stop this thing from happening over and over again. We’ve seen an increase in the number of viewers.” Then a bunch of people chime in saying this is a waste of time to address this. This moment raised a number of tensions in the moment. They opted to continue the meeting.
Harry returns to talk about Access to Justice. They are clearly thinking about how virtual hearings should be the standard. Once again he talks about how the LTB stacks themselves against others. “We were criticized for not making an in-person option easy enough, we heard that and made changes.” – “We have also created video guides on YouTube” – “We’re trying to do as much as we can to get people not comfortable with digital to get more comfortable”
He also explains that the LTB is exploring a technical support email address for those facing issues. Why this doesn’t already exist is still mystifying.
Questions and Answers
After this, the floor opened to questions. Many of the questions addressed what is perceived as lack of accountability and not addressing the fundamental issues of non payment. The first commenter, Teressa explained that “people are giving up,” because the call centre is so bad. All she got in response was an apology from Harry who blamed the the backlog. Blame the backlog on a backlog!
A user Ronit comes in to say that she’s out $40,000 in rent because of what she calls “the tribunal’s incompetence”. She suggests an automatic eviction for unpaid rent and that “people are taking advantage of the system,” which is the number one issue with the delays. “I’m going to lose my house because of the tribunal” – the response: “I understand. We’re getting more adjudicators,” “We’re looking to January to hit the ground running.”
User Sandy explained that scheduling notifications were supposed to have been fixed from the last meeting, and they weren’t. But, of course, the meeting was moved on.
User Hemwatie brought up adjudicator what she considers “lack of training and incompetence”. On the hearing day she claims that she wasn’t even admitted to the room, then once admitted, her file was dismissed. She waited ten months for the hearing only to have her case thrown out. None of these failed actions were really addressed by the speaker whose response to these failures, which we’re seeing more of “It could just be a training issue.” She goes on to explain that another case, because she hadn’t received an order, this leading to her loss of $40,000. The response to further pressure by the landlord was to “move on”.
Asked about L4’s, an LTB executive explains that they are challenged with adding it to the system. The work is “ongoing,”
Some participants considers today’s meeting to be unexpectedly full of chaos and fireworks. With the increasing number of participants, like getting service standards back to normal itself, appears to be out of reach. A landlords after the meeting said this: “My sense with the LTB is that they’re stretched and very tired. While incompetence likely rules the day, these folks feel like they’re beyond their ability to meet the challenges of the day”.
The LTB also talks about sending information to multiple email addresses and how that “delays the process.” Sadly, she didn’t stop to make it clear what email is the “right” email for folks. The LTB’s own website poorly indicates what email addresses ought to be used for what purpose.
“We’d have gone through the backlog in 18 months without the addition of money,” Sean Weir says yet it’s been some 17 months since the COVID eviction moratorium ended and no progress was made on any backlog. In fact, cases are more delayed. ?
Sean Weir ended the session with this statement: “We’re going to break the back of this backlog of 2023.”
