Simon's Legal Resources

ODSP - Reconsideration

. LF v Director of the Ontario Disability Support Program [recon criteria distinct from appeal criteria]

In LF v Director of the Ontario Disability Support Program (Div Ct, 2026) the Divisional Court makes the important point that the issues upon which a reconsideration request may be granted are (almost always) distinct from those that an SBT tribunal appeal may be granted, and thus to determine a reconsideration on appeal standards is an error:

[17] L.F. also challenges the Tribunal’s refusal to consider her request for a reconsideration. We agree that there is no absolute right to a reconsideration. However, the Tribunal wrongly relied on whether there was a right of appeal to the Tribunal. The issue was not whether a Director’s order could be appealed to the Tribunal. The Director did not find a qualifying disability and therefore did not make an order for a review. The issue was whether the Tribunal’s own s. 5 order may be the subject of a request for reconsideration. Based on the application form in the record before this Court, which also refers to Tribunals Ontario Practice Direction, that request was not defeated by the lack of an appeal right.

[18] Since there was no reconsideration, we do not comment on whether it may have been successful. The grounds put forward by L.H. certainly overlap with issues raised in this Court and a decision may have either addressed some or all the issues or at least been of assistance to this Court.

[19] We therefore conclude that the Tribunal erred in law and was unreasonable in refusing to entertain a reconsideration request under Vavilov.

. Swerdfiger v. Director of the Ontario Disability Support Program

In Swerdfiger v. Director of the Ontario Disability Support Program (Ont Div Ct, 2025) the Ontario Divisional Court dismissed an appeal, here from SBT decisions "by the Director of the Ontario Disability Support Program (“ODSP”) in which the Director denied the appellant’s application for a special diet allowance (“SDA”) based on a medical condition known as “Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder” (“ARFID”)".

Here the court considers an SBT reconsideration issue:

Did the Tribunal apply too strict a test for reconsideration?

[28] As mentioned earlier, in the reconsideration decision, the Tribunal held the appellant had failed to establish that she could not have called the additional costing evidence by exercising due diligence. It also held that there had been no procedural unfairness and that the Stage 2 Tribunal had made no legal errors. The appellant submits that the Tribunal employed too strict a test and was empowered to reconsider the Stage 2 decision for “any reasonable reason”. Again, I disagree.

[29] The scope of the Tribunal's reconsideration process is governed by the Tribunal's practice direction: Ontario Social Benefits Tribunal, Practice Direction on Reconsideration Requests. Pursuant to the practice direction, new evidence is not permitted unless it “could not have been obtained by reasonable diligence for the original hearing.” This is precisely the standard applied by the Tribunal with respect to the additional costing evidence the appellant sought to adduce.

[30] The practice direction also provides that the Tribunal will reconsider a decision where “a serious error or omission has occurred.” There is nothing in the reconsideration decision to suggest that the Vice Chair applied any criteria other than that referred to in the practice direction. As he wrote, “the decision is both reasonable and in accordance with the legislation and relevant caselaw.”

[31] As I will explain, I agree with the Vice Chair that the Stage 2 Tribunal committed no legal error.