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JR - SOR - Exception - 'Court in same position'. Paquette v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario [poor document copies]
In Paquette v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (Ont Div Ct, 2026) the Ontario Divisional Court allowed an applicant's HRTO JR, this where the application was "dismissed as abandoned based on his failure to follow a direction to resubmit documents which an adjudicator concluded were “faint and blurry and cannot be read.”".
The court finds that no SOR deference is warranted for fact-findings, here the court is in the 'same position' as the tribunal to assess them:[11] In our view, the Tribunal’s decision to dismiss the application as abandoned because of the applicant’s failure to file legible documents was entirely unreasonable for the simple reason that the documents he filed were legible. Although the letters on them are faint, we had no difficulty reading the documents. Counsel for the WNGH and the Tribunal both acknowledged during the hearing that they could also read the documents.
[12] Counsel for WNGH nonetheless submits that we should defer to the Tribunal’s conclusion that the documents were illegible. We see no basis for deference. We are in as good a position as the Tribunal to assess the legibility of the documents, and the Tribunal’s conclusions were not based on any type of specialized expertise. Insofar as the Tribunal’s conclusion that the documents were illegible is a finding of fact, it is clearly unreasonable, unsupported by the evidence, and reflects palpable and overriding error: H.L. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2005 SCC 25, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 401, at para. 55.
[13] Counsel for WNGH also submits that the Tribunal’s decision can be upheld on the basis that the applicant initially filed his documents six days late and was two days late in responding to the Tribunal’s April 29, 2024 e-mail requiring him to submit legible copies of the documents by May 13, 2024. We do not accept this submission for three reasons. First, the lateness was not the basis on which the Tribunal dismissed the application. Second, the applicant had already complied with the request, since the initial documents were legible. Finally, even if the applicant was a few days late in responding, he cannot be said to have been deliberately refusing to cooperate, which was the case in Eisenberg v. Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology, 2012 ONSC 4802 (Div. Ct.), on which the Tribunal relied.
[14] We recognize that the proceedings before the Tribunal have been ongoing for some time, as counsel for WNGH points out. However, it was WNGH which requested the Tribunal to dismiss the application as abandoned based on the applicant’s failure to provide new readable copies of documents which its counsel now acknowledges were legible to begin with.
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