She pointed to a 2018 Ontario court decision that said tribunals are infringing on Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms when people — particularly reporters from the Toronto Star — are not able to get adjudicative records. ARCH Disability Law Centre and the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario were also involved in that case, she said, as people sometimes disclose their personal medical and employment histories when requesting accommodations for a disability.

“It’s not like the old days…if you wanted to see [the decision] you had to go the courthouse, and that slowed it down. They couldn’t scan it send it out the world,” said Andrews. “These cases are much more available to the public.”

Andrews said there may be a “chill” in people requesting accommodation of their disabilities due to fear that the disabilities will be made public in small communities. Even complaining to the Landlord and Tenant Board can land someone on a “bad tenant list” that gets distributed to other landlords and leaves complainants unable to rent, said Andrews.

“It’s a real problem for vulnerable people,” she said.

Ross & McBride LLP lawyer Wade Poziomka said that so-called troll farms allegedly take names from human rights decisions and make them highly searchable on Google — and the trolls will only remove the Google listing for a fee. It raises questions over whether tribunals should anonymize more decisions, he said.