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Working with the Landlord and Tenant Board to Improve Justice for Tenants

The Landlord and Tenant Board has regular meetings with representatives of the people whose cases they decide. Most bodies that make legal decisions - including the Courts - have such meetings as a way of working out systemic problems that interfere with the efficient administration of justice. Part of ACTO’s work is co-ordinating the tenant representatives to these meetings of the group called the Landlord and Tenant Board Stakeholder Advisory Committee.

The tenant representatives include ACTO’s Legal Director, the Tenant Duty Counsel Program’s Provincial Director and a legal clinic lawyer from each of the four regions of Ontario. The landlord representatives include lawyers and paralegals from private and non-profit landlord groups. The meetings are chaired by Landlord and Tenant Board’s Chairperson and a number of their management and legal staff attend. The meetings provide an interesting forum to discuss problems with the Board and to get advance notice of changes that may have an impact on how tenants’ rights are protected. Unfortunately, many of the Board’s major decisions are made without any consultation and the Board has no real obligation to address the concerns we raise.

This may change in the near future as the Board is becoming part of the “Social Justice Cluster” of tribunals, which includes the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and the Social Benefits Tribunal. Their administration is being transferred to the Ministry of the Attorney-General and Michael Gottheil, a respected adjudicator and administrator, has been appointed as the Executive Chair of the “cluster”. These changes and new laws requiring more openness in tribunal workings may eventually result in improved justice for tenants. In the meantime, we continue to seek tenant justice through our test case and law reform work as well.