SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
May 8, 2023 10:15AM
  • May/8/23 11:10:00 a.m.

I appreciate the opportunity to address the Ombudsman’s report, which is well received.

I’ll remind the member opposite that the Landlord and Tenant Board—the data that he is using was from a previous moment in time. But let me tell you this, and I’m going to quote the Ombudsman, where he says that a factor was the transition of government in 2018. The Landlord and Tenant Board should not have been in that precarious a situation before the 2018 election. So it was a mess when we got it.

What he’s recommending is that we add more adjudicators. Well, we’re doubling the number of adjudicators. That is done. The NDP did not support us.

The Ombudsman says we should add more resources to the back office staff. Well, when we brought that forward, the NDP opposed it. We did it anyway.

We are fixing the Landlord and Tenant Board for all Ontarians, and I wish the NDP would support us on one of the many things that the Ombudsman has highlighted that we’re already doing.

But let me be clear, Mr. Speaker: The member is asking, will we do the things the Ombudsman is saying we should do? Well, we’ve already done most of the things that he’s told us to do. We’ve doubled the number of adjudicators. We’ve supported back office staff. He said technology was failing when this government came to power. Well, this government spent $28.5 million on a new state-of-the-art system. It’s working very well, and they opposed it.

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  • May/8/23 11:10:00 a.m.

My question is to the Attorney General. The Ombudsman’s investigation into delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board was a damning indictment of this government’s failure to provide justice to tenants and landlords. The Conservatives have had five years to fix the Landlord and Tenant Board, yet this report shows that the government has made the problem worse. Delays at the LTB have increased, and the number of people waiting for hearings has doubled to 38,000 people.

This government has accepted all the Ombudsman’s 61 recommendations to fix the LTB. When do you plan to implement those recommendations?

The Landlord and Tenant Board is a mess. Tenants are waiting up to two years to get their landlords to do basic repairs, stop harassing them, to deal with vermin. Landlords are waiting for months—if not years—just for a hearing while they lose on rent or lose their homes because they cannot keep up with their mortgages. This system isn’t working for anybody, and they have had five years to fix that.

Speaker, my question is, can this government actually commit to making those changes that the Ombudsman has recommended? Because Ontarians deserve a Landlord and Tenant Board that actually is working right now for Ontarians.

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