As Ontario emerges from the pandemic, some lawyers say it's time to ditch the Zoom tribunal.
The Landlord and Tenant Board <a href="https://www.qpbriefing.com/2020/09/02/ford-government-fighting-to-keep-evictions-going-as-concerns-raised-about-landlord-and-tenant-board/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">is a mess</a>. It can take over half a year to get a case heard. Hearings are often cacophonies of phone feedback and voices talking over one another as the software strains under poor connections, limited English and irate combatants fighting over a basic necessity.
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While some <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ontario-landlord-tenant-board-wait-problems-collapse-1.6605631" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blame</a> the eviction moratorium and others blame COVID, one lawyer says the medium is the mess.
The LTB was only closed from March to July 2020 due to COVID, noted Douglas Kwan, the director of advocacy and legal services at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO).
"I don't think it's accurate to say that something that happened two years ago still has an impact on their processes," he said.
The provincial ombudsman launched an investigation into LTB delays in January 2020 — pre-pandemic. Then, cases were taking seven to eight weeks to be heard. Now, it's seven to eight months, Kwan said.
In each online hearing "it takes forever for people to figure out, who's my landlord, who's the adjudicator, who's the mediator, who's the tenant — trying to identify the parties over the phone, trying to tell people not to talk over another person," he said.
In a courthouse, people and symbols like the scales of justice help people with limited English know they're in the right place, and staff can help guide them to where they need to go, he said. In the hearing, it's obvious who's the adjudicator — the one on the dais.
But online hearings put some at a disadvantage, Kwan said. An ACTO study that found 60 per cent of tenants participated in LTB hearings by phone, while 70 per cent of landlords tuned in with video.
That's an important difference when you're trying to sway an adjudicator, he said.
"You would never build a courthouse where one party is in a separate room from a judge," he said.
"For certain tribunals where low-income Ontarians are participating, like the Social Benefits Tribunal, the Human Rights Tribunal, the Landlord and Tenant Board, digital doesn't really work," he said.
Each of those tribunals has seen "tremendous delays," he said. As a result, Kwan said he's seeing more cases of people taking matters into their own hands — landlords changing locks, or tenants refusing to pay rent.
Housing is too important to have a "Wild West" system, he said.
The Ministry of the Attorney General didn't provide comment by deadline.
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Court justices usually prefer in-person hearings to make sure no one's whispering to participants off-camera, to remove the possibility of Zoom bombing, and to eliminate technological barriers, Kwan said.
Tribunals, on the other hand, are creatures of the province. The Ford government has put a large emphasis on modernizing the court system. That's led to some improvements, like the ability to file evidence via computer instead of fax machine, Kwan said.
But, "as a result of that emphasis, we have a system where we have two of our judicial systems offering different levels of access," he said.
For some hearings, like the Ontario Land Tribunal, it works well, Kwan said. Everyone on those calls is a lawyer making a six-digit salary — not someone yelling into a phone trying to keep a roof over their head, he said.
Some community organizations have found that pivoting to digital can help them help more people. <a href="https://www.the519.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The 519</a>, a Toronto centre for LGBTQ2S people, found it could reach kids in rural Ontario who wouldn't otherwise have access to their programs, Law Foundation of Ontario CEO Lisa Cirillo said.
Cirillo pointed to the need for more housing, mental health and poverty support to keep people from having to go through the legal system in the first place.
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Ontario should keep some things that changed during COVID — like electronic filing and online options for some tribunals — Kwan said. In some ways, the pandemic dragged the province's legal system "screaming and kicking into the 21st century," said Lenny Abramowicz, the head of the Association of Community Legal Clinics of Ontario.
The government should also restore the 30-per-cent cut it made to Legal Aid Ontario funding in 2019, Abramowicz said.
The pandemic actually softened the blow since there were fewer cases to deal with. "But that's no longer the case," he said.
Infusions of resources for the Crown combined with a lack of interest in legal aid "leads one to question whether this is a government that actually is interested in access to justice or is just interested in winning at any cost," Abramowicz said.

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