Toronto Renters Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: William on November 26, 2022, 10:15:27 pm
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Someone just pointed-out this government press release to me:
Ontario Providing More Support to the Landlord and Tenant Board (https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1002515/ontario-providing-more-support-to-the-landlord-and-tenant-board)
This press release claims:
The Ontario government is making an additional $1.4 million investment into the Landlord and Tenant Board, which will allow the board to hire over 35 additional operational staff to enhance scheduling and client experience, issue decisions and orders faster and help tackle the high number of cases before the board.
The funding builds on the $4.5 million investment over three years announced earlier this year, which will be used to recruit more adjudicators and further help the Landlord and Tenant Board to address longstanding backlog issues.
This all sounds fine, except that the adjudicators at the LTB are appointed by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario on the recommendation of the Minister of the Attorney General. So the number of adjudicators isn’t something that need funding, rather it’s just up to the government to do their job and make those appointments.
It seems that there was a lack of adjudicators back in 2018, just as Doug Ford’s conservative party came into power:
Toronto Star: Shortage of adjudicators hits Landlord and Tenant Board (https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/10/31/shortage-of-adjudicators-hits-landlord-and-tenant-board.html)
It is in this context that once should consider the appointments (or lack thereof) made by Doug Ford’s conservatives. I have heard from several informed sources that the real problem with the LTB is that Ford stopped appointing replacement adjudicators which has lead to a significant shortage, and there is evidence to confirm that this is true. This article includes a graph showing the number of adjudicators by year:
CTV News: Most new Landlord and Tenant Board adjudicators in Ontario are part time: review (https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/most-new-landlord-and-tenant-board-adjudicators-in-ontario-are-part-time-review-1.5807600)
In that article there is a graph about half way down labelled “Landlord & Tenant Board Adjudicators”, and if you study that graph is becomes apparent that number of adjudicators starting falling significantly in 2018 – just as Doug Ford was first elected, and entirely under his watch.
It is also worth noting that the principal point being made in that CTVNews article is that the number of full-time adjudicators hasn’t recovered – the conservatives are hiring new adjudicators only part-time and this is causing new problems.
This seems to me that they have been sabotaging the Landlord and Tenant Board by failing to appoint adjudicators, and waiting for things to crumble and stop working perhaps hoping to be able to bring in sweeping changes – I’ve heard rumours that the conservatives would like to replace the LTB with something new and more “efficient” which would no doubt be terrible for tenants.
Anyway, this press release doesn’t impress me much – there wouldn’t be the huge back-log of cases at the LTB if Doug Ford’s conservatives had been appointing new adjudicators all along as they should have been.
- William