Aggressive strategy needed to fight ‘excruciatingly’ long delays at Landlord and Tenant Board, says Ontario ombudsman
Ontario's massively backlogged Landlord and Tenant Board has been failing in its role of providing swift justice," says the province's ombudsman - pointing to inadequate staffing and glitch-prone technology among the causes.
In a blistering new report, Paul Dube says he received more than 4,000 complaints about the tribunal, where scheduling cases once took a matter of days" but now takes months - if not years, with some tenant cases taking up to two years to schedule.
As of January, his investigation found more than 38,000 cases in the queue, an increase of roughly 13,000 cases since just last May.
The Board's excruciatingly long delays have had immense negative impacts on the thousands of landlords and tenants who depend on it to resolve their tenancy issues," he wrote. We heard from many of those trapped in the queue on both sides of the landlord/tenant relationship - some forced to live in unsafe and substandard conditions, and others facing financial ruin."
In one complaint, a tenant who said they were being harassed by their landlord while living in a home with black mould and leaky windows spent more than a year awaiting a hearing. With no solution in sight, she was forced to leave her home of eight years," Dube wrote.
Another complainant, this time a landlord, said it took more than eight months to eject a tenant facing weapons charges despite being granted an expedited hearing, as the adjudicator in the case left their position before issuing an order.
The report detailed applications repeatedly stymied by staffing shuffles and tech hurdles, including a case that was scheduled for June 2021 but adjourned to be heard at a later date, only for the adjudicator's appointment to expire. That December, the board ordered the matter to be heard by a new adjudicator, and a hearing took place - however that adjudicator resigned before issuing an order. There was still no order as of Jan. 9, 2023.
The phrase perfect storm' is often overused, but it is undoubtedly apt in the case of the now-endemic delays at the Board. A combination of an election, change of government, antiquated technology, a host of inefficient practices, and a global pandemic contributed to a situation in which the Board has been overwhelmed by a multi-year backlog of tens of thousands of applications," Dube wrote.
On the technology side, the report pointed to several faulty systems, including a case management system first introduced in 2008 that in more recent years was running into problems - in one case, a technical issue" with the system's calendar was limiting the board's ability to process applications it received.
Even when a new system was launched in 2021, it was not without problems. As of March 2022, Dube said there was a list of more than 200 bugs in the system being gradually addressed.
When it comes to delays, periodic data publicly released by Tribunals Ontario shows the extent to which both landlords and tenants have been left waiting in recent months.
From late October to late December 2022 - the latest data available - a landlord who had applied to evict their tenant due to allegations of unpaid rent would wait an average of 342 days between filing and an order. If a landlord wanted to evict a tenant for other reasons such as moving a family member into the unit or for major renovations, Tribunals Ontario says the average duration was 371.8 days.
If a tenant applied to the board over an alleged violation of rights, their average case time was even longer, at 469.2 days on average. If a renter filed over a suspected bad-faith eviction, the average wait was 336.4 days. And if a tenant applied to remedy maintenance issues, the average length was 432.9 days.
Across all case types, the data shows landlords' cases are moving faster than tenants' cases - with the average landlord filing taking 221.5 days to move from application to final order, compared with the nearly doubled 427.9-day average seen among tenant-led filings.
Dube's report cited a Tribunals Ontario official as saying the board generally prioritizes scheduling landlord applications to reduce its backlogs, because filings such as evictions for nonpayment of rent were relatively straightforward" and could generally be heard faster.
Dube's report however urges the board to immediately" triage outstanding tenant matters. Where they typically take longer, he said the board generally allots 30 to 60 minutes per hearing, inevitably resulting in the case having to be rescheduled.
If the Board continues with this approach, it will make negligible progress in tackling the backlog of tenant matters. It must change its strategy as soon as possible to ensure that more tenant applications are scheduled and more realistic hearing time frames are set," he wrote.
Historically, the report noted, nearly 90 per cent of board applications are from landlords.
In a press conference at Queen's Park following the report's release, Dube said his office found no evidence of bias" in prioritizing landlord cases - it seemed, he said, that staff were simply reaching for the low-hanging fruit" of cases to bring down the backlog.
The report makes a series of other recommendations to tackle the issues plaguing the board - including the creation of an aggressive" strategy between the Ministry of the Attorney General, Tribunals Ontario and the board to cut down the backlog, and new policies and procedures for the timely reappointment" of board adjudicators.
While Dube noted he was encouraged" by the positive responses received from Tribunals Ontario, on behalf of the board, as well as from the ministry - and, in a press release, recognized efforts such as a recent provincial vow to double the number of full-time adjudicators - his report concluded that all three bodies could have done much more" to address the issues at hand.
In response to the report, attorney general spokesperson Andrew Kennedy said they were reviewing its findings, but noted that Dube's report examined past conditions at the board and did not reflect ongoing work."
We will continue to work with Tribunals Ontario to ensure that the LTB is delivering effective dispute resolutions services."
Victoria Gibson is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering affordable housing. Reach her via email: victoriagibson@thestar.ca