Court File and Parties

CITATION: Read et al. v. Toronto Seniors Housing and Tribunals Ontario, 2025 ONSC 6511

DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: DC-25-00000266-0000

DATE: 2025-11-21

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE – ONTARIO

DIVISIONAL COURT

RE: Sandra Read and Henn Pervik, Appellants AND: Toronto Seniors Housing, Respondent AND: Tribunals Ontario, Respondent

BEFORE: ACJ McWatt JJ.

COUNSEL: Frances A. Marinic, for the Appellants Anthony Spadafora, for the Respondent Toronto Seniors Housing Valerie Crystal, for the Respondent Tribunals Ontario

HEARD: November 17, 2025 (by video conference)

Endorsement

[1] Sandra Read and Henn Pervik (“the “Tenants”), appeal the order of the Landlord and Tenant Board (the “Board”) dated March 7, 2025.

[2] The Tenants applied to the Board alleging that their landlord, Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation (the “Landlord”), substantially interfered with the reasonable enjoyment of their Rental Unit in the way it dealt with bed bugs in their unit. The Board denied the Tenants’ application finding that the Landlord “immediately and repeatedly responded to the issue” and “that the actions taken by the Landlord were reasonable in the circumstances”.

[3] The Tenants allege in this appeal that the Board erred by not providing the requisite procedural fairness during the hearing below and by making an unreasonable decision.

[4] First, there is no merit to the Tenants’ suggestion that the Board did not provide them with the requisite standard of procedural fairness. Second, the question of whether the Board’s decision is reasonable is not relevant here.

FACTS

[5] The Landlord owns and operates the residential rental complex municipally located at 3330 Danforth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M1L 4P9. The Tenants reside in unit 923 at the property.

[6] At the Board Proceeding, the Tenants sought a rent abatement, out-of-pocket expenses for furniture, household items, and truck rentals, and to have the Landlord pay a fine.

[7] During the hearing, the Tenants’ each testified in support of their application. Their counsel cross-examined the Landlord’s witnesses, and the Tenants’ counsel gave closing submissions setting out her theory of the case as to why the Board should find in the Tenants’ favour.

[8] In dismissing the Application (the “Order”), the Board found that:

1. the allegations in the Application were not proved on a balance of probabilities;
2. the Landlord’s response to the bed bug issue was timely and reasonable. The Landlord responded immediately and set up treatment within a week of the complaints;
3. in response to concerns about bugs entering around the baseboards, and damage to baseboards from treatments, the Landlord inspected immediately and attended within a couple of weeks to change all the baseboards in the Unit;
4. the Tenants provided no evidence regarding the quantity of bed bugs or the effectiveness of the Landlord’s treatment and just because the bedbugs re-occurred does not mean the treatment was ineffective;
5. given that there are 194 units in the Residential Complex and hundreds of people moving about it, the source of bed bugs could be from anywhere; and
6. the Landlord was not the cause of the occurrence or re-occurrence of the bed bugs.

No Error of Procedural Fairness

[9] In Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) at para 22, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the duty of procedural fairness may apply in a variety of circumstances, but that the content of the duty is not uniform. In determining the content of the duty of procedural fairness, the court held:

Although the duty of procedural fairness is flexible and variable, and depends on an appreciation of the context of the particular statute and the rights affected… The purpose of the participatory rights contained within it is to ensure that administrative decisions are made using a fair and open procedure, appropriate to the decision being made and its statutory, institutional and social context, with an opportunity for those affected to put forward their views and evidence fully and have them considered by the decision-maker.

[10] In Baker (Ibid. at paras. 23-27) the Court also identified several factors as relevant to determining the content of the duty of fairness, including:

1. the nature of the decision being made and the process followed in making it;
2. the nature of the statutory scheme and the terms of the statute pursuant to which the body operates;
3. the importance of the decision to the individual or the individuals affected;
4. the legitimate expectations of the person challenging the decision; and
5. the choices of procedure made by the agency itself.

[11] The court described the fifth factor, the choices of procedure made by the agency itself, in the following manner:

Fifth, the analysis of what procedures the duty of fairness requires should also take into account and respect the choices of procedure made by the agency itself, particularly when the statute leaves to the decision-maker the ability to choose its own procedures, or when the agency has an expertise in determining what procedures are appropriate in the circumstances. While this, of course, is not determinative, important weight must be given to the choice of procedures made by the agency itself and its institutional constraints.

[12] The Board is also mandated by section 183 of the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c. 17, as amended (“RTA”) to “adopt the most expeditious method of determining the questions arising in a proceeding that affords to all persons directly affected by the proceeding an adequate opportunity to know the issues and be heard on the matter”. This Court has confirmed that one of the purposes of the Board “is to afford landlords and tenants access to adjudication in a timely, cost-effective setting where matters are heard in a summary manner” (Edwards v. Waham, 2017 ONSC 2882 at para 37).

[13] The Statutory Powers Procedure Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. S.22, as amended, s. 25.0.1 (the “SPPA”) applies to all proceedings before the Board and section 25.01 of the SPPA confirms that the Board has power to control its own procedures and practices and, where required, is entitled to establish rules for those procedures under section 25.1 of the SPPA.

[14] The Board has adopted its own unique procedural rules. Of relevance, section 1.6 of the Board’s rules provide that:

In order to provide the most expeditious and fair determination of the questions arising in any proceeding the LTB may:

• conduct any inquiry it considers necessary or request any inspection it considers necessary
• amend an application on its own motion where appropriate, on notice to the parties
• direct the order in which issues, including issues the parties consider to be preliminary, will be considered and determined
• define and narrow the issues to be decided
• question a party or witness
• order disclosure of evidence
• limit the evidence or submissions on any issue where satisfied there has been full and fair disclosure of all relevant matters
• refuse to consider a party's evidence or submissions where the party has not provided the evidence or submissions to the LTB and the other parties as directed by the LTB; and
• take any other action the LTB considers appropriate in the circumstances.

[15] In this case, the Tenants were provided sufficient procedural fairness. They fully participated in the hearing before the Board, which included the examination of witnesses and the presentation of legal argument. The Board addressed and considered all the issues that were properly before it. The Board Member’s asking questions during the Hearing is consistent with the Board’s mandate under section 183 of the RTA. It is permitted by the Board’s Rules of Procedure. It allowed the Board to control its own procedures.

[16] Therefore, there is no merit to this ground of appeal.

Reasonableness of the Order is Irrelevant

[17] An appeal from an order of the Board may be made to this court but only on a question of law. This Court’s only task when considering such an appeal is to determine whether the Board used the proper applicable legal tests in the proceeding before it. The applicable standard of review is correctness (Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at paras. 36 – 37).

[18] This Court has no jurisdiction on an appeal of an order of the Board to consider whether the order was reasonable as according to the “reasonableness” analysis set out Vavilov. If the Tenants wanted to challenge the reasonableness of the Board decision, then they ought to have commenced an application for judicial review and not an appeal. When considering appeals that raise issues of statutory interpretation, the court must continue to respect the Board’s specialized function due to its subject matter experience and expertise, even on the correctness standard (Vavilov at paras. 36 – 37; Zhou v. Cherishome Living, 2020 ONSC 500 at paras. 36 – 37; Smith v. Gega, 2023 ONSC 4723 at para. 25).

[19] The Board properly identified that the proceeding raised considerations of whether the Landlord complied with its maintenance obligations. The Order further correctly identified that, based on the context of the Application, the Board was tasked with determining whether the Landlord’s response to the bed bug issue was timely and reasonable. As the Landlord did not breach its maintenance obligations and made a timely and reasonable response to the bed bug issue (based on a finding of mixed fact and law), it cannot be said that the Landlord substantially interfered with the Tenants’ reasonable enjoyment of the Rental Unit or the Residential Complex given that the bed bugs were not caused by the Landlord.

[20] The Tenants’ assert that “the decision-maker deviated from the scope of s.22 and the T2 application by superseding this scope of assessment of the facts and substituted a scope of consideration under a T6 application for breach of maintenance obligations”, but this assertion is contrary to what occurred during the Hearing. In the hearing, the Board Member addressed the nuance with the Tenants’ substantial interference Application and an application based on maintenance issues, showing that they were aware of the actual scope of the Application.

[21] The Tenants also argue that the evidentiary record was not sufficient to support the conclusions in the Order. However, Ms. Read herself testified that the Landlord would respond immediately to bed bug concerns. And, the Landlord’s evidence also contained significant information about pest treatments in and inspections of the Unit.

[22] The decision-makers are presumed to have reviewed the full record absent proof to the contrary and there is no evidence that supports that the Board failed or unjustifiably refused to consider any piece of evidence offered by the Tenants in this case.

[23] For these reasons, the appeal is dismissed.

[24] The Appellants are ordered to pay costs to the Respondent in the amount of $5000.00.

ACJ McWatt Released: November 21, 2025