Virtual element contributes to mega backlog: Wilkins

Continued from page 1

He’s witnessed plenty of horror stories in regard to the tribunal lag issues leading to many finding themselves on the streets.

“The report is very telling and it’s not surprising at all,” Wilkins told The Voice. “I have tenants who are waiting 18 months for a hearing.”

Wilkins said “most people” associated with the LTB say the hearings should go back to an in-person format, which pre-pandemic could normally be scheduled in a matter of days.

“Even though pre-pandemic, in-person hearings were nowhere perfect, it was much more efficient than it is now,” Wilkins said. “The problem pre-pandemic was that there weren’t enough adjudicators and they are now doubling the number of adjudicators. If they would have done that pre-pandemic with in-person hearings, there would be no backlog.”

A paralegal, Wilkins said that while switching hearings to a virtual format during the pandemic was supposed to help, it had the opposite effect with indigent and mentally challenged tenants unable to scale the digital wall.

Wilkins said he has had more than one client who didn’t have a cell- phone trying to access their hearing from a payphone, only to be forced to feed coins into the phone while waiting to get online.

The province has admitted there was already a backlog prior to the pandemic, with 20,000 cases stacked up, which in three years has nearly doubled. Dube said the situation was aggravated by the pandemic, a change in government, procedural inefficiencies – including a lack of trained adjudicators – and two moratoriums on evictions that occurred due to COVID-19.

The report was initiated before COVID-19 hit, but was delayed by the pandemic.