Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government needs to prioritize the appointment of adjudicators at the province’s understaffed Landlord and Tenant Board, an expert in tenant law says.

The current wait time for a hearing at the board is eight weeks, far longer than the target of between 25 and 30 days.

“Having quality, experienced, well-trained adjudicators is really important to tenants being able to have a chance at these tribunals,” said Kenneth Hale, director of advocacy and legal services at the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.

“They make decisions about tenants lives, so doing it right is really important. We think this should be a really high priority for the government.”

Hale was commenting on an annual report from Social Justice Tribunals Ontario (SJTO) posted online last week. The SJTO is responsible for overseeing a range of boards, including the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, the Social Benefits Tribunal, and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

In the report, outgoing executive chair Michael Gottheil, stressed the importance of skilled adjudicators when it comes to administration of “fair and accessible justice.” He noted that a combination of term limits and delayed appointments has meant the SJTO has not had the “appropriate adjudicative and subject area expertise” to manage the tribunals.

“The impending 42nd Ontario general election worsened the situation by delaying appointments or limiting appointment extensions to six months,” wrote Gottheil. “As a result, several of our experienced adjudicators left before their final term expired for other opportunities, and several vacancies have yet to be filled.”

The Landlord and Tenant Board handled about 80 per cent of 100,126 applications made to all tribunals between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018, the report showed. Of the 80,791 combined tenant and landlord applications about 40 per cent were handled in Toronto. Of the total provincial applications 78,444 were resolved and more than 60 per cent of those resolutions were at a hearing. Over the last fiscal year, 31,002 applications were submitted online, the bulk related to nonpayment of rent, through a 2015 system designed to streamline operations, the report showed.

The boards handle a range of issues, from quick orders to pay owed rent or repairs to tenant accommodations, to more detailed disputes. One Toronto location has also been the site of raucous protests over proposed rent hikes.

Since March, seven full-time and four-part time adjudicators have left, and there is an additional 17 whose terms expire at or before the year’s end, SJTO communications adviser Vanessa Campbell confirmed by email. SJTO has requested that the members whose terms are running out should be reappointed. She said the board currently has 33 adjudicators.

In early September, a notice was posted to the board’s website warning that “a shortage of adjudicators” has affected regular standards of service and applicants “may experience a longer than usual number of days before a hearing can take place.” The current wait time for a hearing is eight weeks, said Campbell. The standard intended wait time was between 25 to 30 business days.

Hale said it is not unusual for the appointment process to be put on hold in the run-up to the election, as the sitting government shouldn’t be appointing people to vacancies that could and should be handled by the party in power.

But it would also be a mistake to rush to fill those positions, he stressed.

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“It’s not really going to work in the interest of tenants in the long run,” Hale said. “I’m not even sure it will work in the interests of landlords, either.” It can also take adjudicators the better part of a year to get up to speed, he said.

The government has also been tasked with an overhaul of the existing tribunal system, which should result in increased transparency, by next spring. At present, members of the public cannot access full records related to cases before the board unless they are directly involved.