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| Kathy Laird |
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| Voy Stelmaszynski |
The deplorable situation at the LTB is not getting better. According to the most recent Annual Report from Tribunals Ontario, the situation is getting worse. The backlog of LTB applications has grown to over 53,000.
Despite increased funding and more staff and more significantly adjudicators than ever before (85 adjudicators in 2022/23 as compared to approximately 53 in 2018), the delays remain crushing and the number of cases resolved each year has continued to drop, as documented in Tribunals Ontario’s 2022/23 LTB Annual Report. And this is the case notwithstanding that every year since 2018/19, the LTB has received fewer new applications than pre-2019 levels. Cumulatively, the LTB has received over 57,000 fewer new cases over the last three fiscal years than under the previous leadership, which was able to manage the larger caseload with fewer adjudicators and without creating a significant backlog.
This begs the question: what is going wrong at the LTB?
Wait times increased by tenfold
The average wait for an order on an arrears eviction is now 342 days, according to Tribunals Ontario’s most recent website data, as compared to 32 days during the same period in 2018. This means that, whereas previously, a landlord could expect to get an eviction order while still covered by a tenant’s last month’s rent, the same landlord will now be without rent for almost a year before they can get an order granting repossession.
For tenant applications, Tribunals Ontario reports that the average wait time from filing to order is even longer — 427 days — with some tenant applications, including applications seeking a maintenance order, taking over two years to be resolved. This can be compared to an average of 70 days for a tenant application to be resolved in a comparable period in 2018. Ontario’s ombudsman stated in a 2023 report, Administrative Justice Delayed, Justice Denied, that his investigation had found tenant applications stalled at the LTB for as long as six years (para.148).
The most recent Tribunals Ontario Annual Report also states that when a member of the public tries to telephone the LTB seeking assistance, they now wait more than three times as long on hold as compared to the three-year average wait time reported in 2018/19 Annual Report, even as the LTB now answers half the number of calls.
Fewer applications resolved year after year as backlog grows
Under Ontario’s Conservative government and the leadership team at Tribunals Ontario, members of the public who need the assistance of the Landlord and Tenant Board have received increasingly diminished service every year since 2018, in the number of public calls answered and, most importantly, in the number of applications resolved.
These numbers speak for themselves:
Fiscal year Applications Applications Applications
received resolved outstanding
2018/19 82.095 79,476 14,276
2019/20 80,874 72,064 22,803
2020/21 48,422 35,983 34,731
2021/22 61,586 61,868 32,800
2022/23 73,208 52,986 53,507
But notwithstanding this clear record of growing dysfunction at the LTB under Tribunals Ontario and the current Conservative government since 2019, the Attorney General has risen in the Legislature to claim that his government has been working diligently to clean up a mess that, he says inaccurately, was left at the LTB by the previous Liberal government.
The ombudsman’s report on the LTB, published in May 2023, cited a growing backlog of 38,000. But this was an underestimate — the number had in fact grown to over 53,000 already by March 2023, according to the more recently published Tribunals Ontario’s Annual Report. Why did Tribunals Ontario and the Attorney General not share these more up-to-date figures with the ombudsman before release of his report? But even based on that underestimation, the ombudsman stated:
“Over the past few years, the Board has proven itself unequipped for the task of reducing its extraordinary backlog of applications. More importantly, those applications represent tens of thousands of Ontarians suffering hardship caused by the Board’s inability to provide timely service. As an administrative tribunal, the Board is fundamentally failing in its role of providing swift justice to those seeking resolution of residential landlord and tenant issues. In doing so, it is denying justice to a significant segment of Ontarians.
Excruciatingly long delays have had immense negative impacts on thousands of landlords and tenants who depend on the Board to resolve their tenancy issues. 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.”
Excruciatingly long delays have had immense negative impacts on thousands of landlords and tenants who depend on the Board to resolve their tenancy issues. 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.”
What is amiss at Tribunals Ontario?
It is worth saying at the outset that the LTB is not the only tribunal under Tribunals Ontario’s leadership where there has been a precipitous drop in access to justice. The backlog of cases at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) has doubled since the HRTO was moved into Tribunals Ontario, at the same time as the number of full evidentiary decisions has fallen dramatically. The backlog in automobile accidents claims at the Licence Appeal Tribunal has grown from 4,241 in 2017/18 to 13,903 in 2022/23.
Misleading data reporting from Tribunals Ontario
It is alarming to note that Tribunals Ontario itself is not transparent in reporting its failures. In addition to apparently not providing the ombudsman with up-to-date figures before publication of his report, Tribunals Ontario’s most recent Annual Report, in its Key Performance Indicators chart, states that in 80 per cent of cases across its 13 tribunals, it had met its target for scheduling hearings. However, LTB-specific data in the report showed that the LTB only met its hearing target in seven per cent of cases, and the LTB was responsible for almost 44,000 of the 71,000 “hearing events” at Tribunals Ontario last year. The reported 80 per cent success rate was calculated by weighing the LTB as equivalent to all other tribunals, notwithstanding that every one of the other tribunals had far fewer hearings. For example, Ontario Special Education Tribunal had only two hearings in 2022/23, met its hearing target in 100 per cent of those two cases, and was weighted evenly with the LTB.
Up-to-date LTB data is missing from Tribunals Ontario website
Significant LTB data for 2023 is missing from Tribunals Ontario’s Open Data Inventory page on its website. As of mid-February 2024, all data for 2023 is missing from the “Average Days to Hearing and Order Report” on the website; the last entry is for Oct. 1, 2022 to Dec. 31, 2022, well over one year ago. On the “Key Performance Indicators” website page for the LTB, most of the data categories are marked “N/A” or “TBD.”
In the light of this overall picture, it is difficult to have confidence in the fact that Tribunals Ontario is now reporting that, in the first quarter of 2023/24, the LTB met an expanded 50-55 hearing target in, on average, 65 per cent of hearings. This calculation not only excludes the tens of thousands of applications that have been stockpiling in the backlog over the last four years, but also belies the information in Tribunals Ontario’s Open Data Inventory on its website for the same period. The Average Days to First Hearing Report states that, for the same quarter, it took an average of 134 days for an arrears application to move to a first day of hearing, and 188 days for all other landlord applications, as well as an astounding 298 days on average for tenant applications to move to hearing.
Tribunal Watch Ontario believes that Ontarians deserve clear information on how their public institutions are performing. This is particularly the case for a justice sector agency that affects the lives of tens of thousands of people every year. Tribunals Ontario is the largest cluster of justice agencies in the province, and the Landlord and Tenant Board is our busiest tribunal. We deserve better.
This is the first installment of a three-part series. Up Next: What Factors are Contributing to the LTB Crisis at Tribunals Ontario.
A member of Tribunal Watch Ontario, Kathy Laird is a retired human rights lawyer and former counsel at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. She is former director of the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario and the Human Rights Legal Support Centre. Voy Stelmaszynski is a retired solicitor with over 25 years’ experience in the adjudicative tribunal sector. He is a member of Tribunal Watch Ontario's steering committee. He can be reached at voystel@gmail.com.
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