Tribunal Watch Ontario published an analysis of Tribunals Ontario’s report last week
After reducing its backlog by only 27 cases in its latest fiscal year, the Landlord and Tenant Board resolved nearly 6,400 cases over the next four months, according to Tribunals Ontario’s latest annual report.
The report, released to the public in December, stated that LBT had a backlog of 53,030 cases at the end of its fiscal year on March 31, 2024 – a minor reduction from the 53,057 cases Tribunals Ontario reported a year earlier.
By July 31, however, that number had fallen to 46,632 – a 12 percent reduction from the March figure.
Watchdog group Tribunal Watch Ontario noted these figures in an analysis of Tribunal Ontario’s report last week. The watchdog’s analysis focuses on the LTB, Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and Licence Appeal Tribunal – Automobile Accident Benefits Service, the three tribunals responsible for nearly 90 percent of all hearings conducted at Tribunals Ontario.
The watchdog called Tribunal Ontario’s decision to include data outside of the LBT’s 2023-2024 fiscal year in its report “a very unusual move.”
The significant backlog reduction between March and July is “an achievement to be sure, but one that is reported prematurely and may or may not be sustained by current year’s end,” the watchdog said, adding that Tribunals Ontario had delivered the report to Attorney General Doug Downey in June.
The watchdog noted that the July backlog is also much larger than the LTB’s previous average backlog of less than 14,000 cases. The figure increased substantially after Premier Doug Ford merged the province’s tribunals under a single umbrella entity in 2019.
According to Tribunals Ontario’s report, measures it adopted – including hiring new adjudicators and staff, new technology, and a new scheduling strategy – helped the LTB cut down on application processing times and address its backlog. However, the number of applications the LTB received in its latest fiscal year increased by 31 percent to approximately 84,000 – the second-highest number of applications that the LTB has ever received in a single year.
The report said the LTB also saw a higher proportion of complex applications that require more time to hear.
The watchdog said the annual report’s data does not support Tribunal Ontario’s assertion that its new measures would have significantly reduced the backlog if not for the applications hike. According to the watchdog, only 35 percent of the LTB’s cases were reported to fall within a target timeframe of 90 days, and no comparative numbers are available for the previous fiscal year.
Kathy Laird, a Tribunal Watch Ontario’s steering committee member, told Law Times last week that Tribunals Ontario’s report puts “a very positive spin on everything” but has several unexplained gaps when you closely analyze the data. The report does not explain, for example, how the LTB pushed through thousands of cases in four months after resolving only 27 in a year.
In a statement on Thursday, a spokesperson for Tribunals Ontario said the organization “is very proud of its accomplishments to date and is laser focused on eliminating the backlogs at the LTB and HRTO.”
The spokesperson said that as of February 2025, the LTB “has reduced its active case count to approximately 43,000, representing a 20% reduction since December 31, 2023.”
She added that 11 of the 13 tribunals have no backlog at all, and that backlogs at two tribunals were eliminated in 2023.
While the backlog reduction at the LTB is a positive development, Laird insists that the LTB process remains unfair and that “delays are still enormous.”
Before Ford consolidated the province’s tribunals, “If a landlord only has a last month to rent, it used to be that if he brought an arrears application, he would have his order within the month or maybe six weeks,” Laird says. “Now, if a tenant doesn't pay rent, the soonest he can get to a hearing is 90 days.
“So, by the time he gets the decision and gets it in force, he's out of rent for a much longer period of time, which doesn't hurt a big corporate landlord, but it really does hurt small landlords,” she adds. “And then for tenants, it's much worse.”
