Landlord and Tenant Board hearings will be held in an online format indefinitely with requests to move in-person rarely granted , despite a ‘messy’ system that puts some tenants at a disadvantage.
Tribunals Ontario recently confirmed with GuelphToday sister site The Trillium it "does not intend to return to default in-person hearings, as our user experience and feedback to date show that a digital-first strategy is more efficient and aligned with what our users have come to want and expect."
Yet, it’s not a system that works for everyone, according to lawyer and executive director of the Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County, Stephanie Clendenning.
The clinic provides free legal advice for low-income people in Guelph and Wellington County, and “frequently” sees tenants struggle to navigate virtual hearings since they moved online during the pandemic.
“The struggle that you see people have when they’re trying to navigate it is really, really sad,” she said.
“I'm not saying that the digital first approach is bad in every way… There's no doubt that going digital for some people is actually great,” she said. “Just in a lot of ways (it) doesn't work, for our clients in particular.”
Virtual hearings are more convenient for some, since you don’t need to travel. This was likely great news for those living in Wellington County, who would traditionally need to come to Guelph.
But for others, it can make an already anxiety-ridden process even more overwhelming.
“Even just to log on,” she said. “We have tenants sometimes calling us saying ‘I can’t get onto my hearing, the links aren’t working, my internet is intermittent.”
Hearings are organized into different blocks by hearing type. Your hearing might be scheduled for 9:30 a.m., but when you sign on, there are 20 to 30 other people in the waiting room, all scheduled for the same block.
“Then once they actually sign you in, you're (wondering) what's going on? Where do I go? You have people unmuting when they're not supposed to. It can just be quite messy.”
If you’re having trouble with the internet or can’t access a computer, you can call in by phone as an alternative, which she said “is just a complete nightmare.”
“Because now you don't even have the visual aid to try and follow what's happening in front of you, in terms of who's speaking and who's going where,” she said.
If you’ve called in, you also might not be able to see evidence on the screen, and it makes it more difficult to judge your testimony, since they can’t see your body language, she said.
It’s also not ideal if the person has a pay-as-you-go phone, since the hearing might be scheduled for 9:30 a.m. but not take place for hours later.
Mental health struggles, language barriers and various disabilities could make it difficult for people to follow along both online or over the phone, she said. Low-income tenants might struggle to access stable internet or a safe, private space to use a phone for an extended period of time.
Seniors are one of the biggest groups impacted by the change, she said, since they often don’t have experience using online platforms like Zoom. Sometimes, family or friends will be there to help them, but not everyone is that fortunate.
“A lot of them are really isolated, and they get the notice for this hearing, and they don't know what to do about it,” she said.
For these reasons, digital hearings have led to a “disproportionate amount of no shows" – more than Clendenning has ever seen.
If a landlord is seeking eviction and has sufficient evidence, that means the tenant could be evicted without giving their testimony. The legal clinic usually gets the call by the time the eviction order shows up in the mail.
“In a perfect world, the default type of hearing would revert to in person, giving the parties the ability to request a digital hearing.”
MPP Mike Schreiner agrees, and recently showed support for hearings returning to in-person, saying the fair thing to do is make in-person hearings “automatically approved and widely available.”
But if things continue on like this, Clendenning said the LTB needs better guidelines for how to request an in-person or alternate-format hearing.
Currently landlords and tenants can file accommodation requests under the Human Rights Code, or because the default format would result in an unfair hearing.
But people rarely see those accommodation requests granted.
Someone might also want an in-person hearing because of difficulty focusing, stress-induced anxiety, or hearing impairments.
They’re usually denied.
If the reason is a lack of access to technology, the response is typically to go to one of the access terminals. The closest one to Guelph and Wellington County is in Hamilton – too far for those with a disability or on low-income.
Another challenge with virtual hearings is tenant duty counsel, which the clinic offers four days a week, providing free legal advice to tenants who are unrepresented on the day of their hearing.
Before hearings were moved online, they were organized regionally. Now, they’re organized by the type of applications. So all eviction hearings across Ontario take place during one block, and arrears hearings in another.
That means more than one Guelph hearing could be happening at the same time, leaving legal counsel spread thin.
“Now we might have seven different blocks to attend in seven different hearing rooms all at the exact same time” she said. “With one person doing tenant duty counsel, they have to be in seven different places at 9 a.m.”
They try to bounce around from each room quickly, she said, but each conversation could take half an hour, and the next block could be halfway through the hearing by the time they get there.
“So people are being disadvantaged in the sense that they're not always able to get that advice from duty counsel just because of the structure.”
“We make it work,” she said. “But you definitely see people who are not able to get that same level of service or any advice from duty counsel on time, just because of the way the system is designed.”
She said the Advocacy Centre for Tenants of Ontario “has done a tremendous amount of advocacy work with Tribunals Ontario” regarding the importance of organizing hearings regionally if they are to stay online.
“We've been told no, it's never gonna happen,” she said.
In which case, Clendenning said any tenants headed to the LTB with legal questions should reach out to the clinic ahead of the hearing for free legal advice.
