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Notice - General

. Equity Builders Ltd. et al. v. Landlord and Tenant Board et al.

In Equity Builders Ltd. et al. v. Landlord and Tenant Board et al. (Ont Divisional Ct, 2025) the Divisional Court (mostly) dismissed a multiple-proceeding combination of both LL-initiated JRs and RTA s.210 appeals, here respecting multiple units in a Sarnia apartment building. After a fire "the Chief Building Official for the City of Sarnia issued an order to the Landlord directing that the premises be vacated", followed by a second order several days later restricting access to a lesser number of units. The LL subsequently refused re-entry to tenants not covered by the later less restrictive order, eventually resulting in RTA orders of illegal lock-out for numerous units - and that "the Landlords had substantially interfered with the reasonable enjoyment by the Tenants of their units; and found that the Landlords obstructed, coerced, threatened or interfered with the Tenants".

Here the court finds that a individual party should have received notice before they were held to be a landlord, which entailed jointly and several liability with a corporation:
Did the Board deny Mr. Singh procedural fairness by finding him to be a landlord without notice?

[68] The Landlords argue that it was procedurally unfair for the Board to find that Mr. Singh is “landlord” as defined in the RTA and therefore personally liable for the monetary awards without giving Mr. Singh notice it was considering so and receiving submission on the issue. We agree.

[69] The term “landlord” is defined in the RTA to include the owner of a rental unit as well as any person who “permits occupancy of a rental unit” or any person who is “entitled to possession of the residential complex and who attempts to enforce any of the rights of a landlord.”

[70] Mr. Singh was not named by the Board as a landlord in the first or second interim orders (dated March May 8, 2023, and March 11, 2024, respectively). He was only named as a landlord in the unit specific orders. In those orders, the Board incorrectly stated that the tenants had sought an order against Mr. Singh. In fact, none of the tenants named Mr. Singh as the landlord in their application. They each named Equity Builders or EQB as the landlord.[1]

[71] The Board did not give reasons for naming Mr. Singh as a landlord.

[72] The Tenants argue there was ample evidence to support the finding that Mr. Singh is a landlord as defined in the RTA. The Tenants argue there was nothing unfair about the Board naming Mr. Singh as a landlord because he referred to himself as the landlord throughout his testimony and he testified that he was responsible for many of the decisions about whether the tenants would be permitted back into their units, which was the central issue in the hearings. Finally, the Tenants argues that Mr. Singh was effectively on notice that he may be named as a landlord because the Board raised the issue during the hearings.

[73] Ms. Singh was entitled to a fair hearing before the Board. What is required for a fair hearing is flexible, variable and context specific. When deciding whether the proceedings below were procedurally fair, we must consider the nature of the decision being made and the process followed in making it, the nature of the statutory scheme, the importance of the decision to Mr. Singh, and the choice of procedure selected by the administrative tribunal: Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1999 CanLII 699 (SCC), [1999] 2 S.C.R. 817.

[74] In terms of the nature and importance of this issue, the Board’s decision to name Mr. Singh as a “landlord” has very serious implications for him. Because of that decision, he is jointly and severally liable for all the damages awarded to the individual tenants. However, he is not personally liable for the administrative fines which total $525,000.

[75] Turning then to the procedure the Board followed in relation to this issue. The Board expressly raised the question of who ought to be named as the landlord during the hearings. At the start of the third day of the hearing, on September 29, 2023, the Board noted that the tenants had named different people and entities as the landlord(s) in their applications and the Board had named different people and entitles as the landlord(s) in the Notices of Hearing. The Board asked the parties to try to reach an agreement on that issue. The Board then said that if the parties could not reach an agreement, “we would probably have to go through on a case-by-case basis to determine who [is] to be listed or not listed.”

[76] The parties never told the Board that they had reached an agreement on who should be named as the landlord(s) and none of the tenants sought to amend their application to name Mr. Singh as a landlord.

[77] In the written closing submission filed on behalf of the 14 tenants, the tenants referred to Mr. Singh as the property manager or a director of Equity Builders. In one paragraph, when describing Mr. Singh’s evidence, the tenants referred to Mr. Singh as “the landlord.” But the tenants did not make any submissions about who should be named as the landlord(s) or why Mr. Singh should be named as a landlord.

[78] The Landlord’s closing submissions only name Equity Builders Ltd. as the landlord. The Landlord’s closing submissions also contain no submissions on whether any other person or entity should be named as a landlord.

[79] The Board did not seek further submissions on the issue it raised on September 29, 2023.

[80] There is no doubt that the Board had the authority to name Mr. Singh as a landlord. The Board can add or remove a party “as it considers appropriate”: Landlord and Tenant Board Rules of Procedure, r. 1.6(b), RTA, s. 187(2). The Board is also expressly entitled to disregard "the separate corporate existence of participants” when making its findings: RTA, s. 202(1). The question, though, is not whether the Board had jurisdiction to name Mr. Singh as a landlord in addition to naming Equity Builder’s Inc. The question is also not whether there was evidence to support the Tribunal’s finding that Mr. Singh is a landlord. The question for us is whether it was procedurally fair for the Board to have done so in this case.

[81] We find that it was procedurally unfair for the Board to name Mr. Singh as a landlord in the absence of an express request by the tenants to do so without giving Mr. Singh notice of its intention to name him as a landlord and without giving him an opportunity to make submissions on that issue.

[82] The appropriate remedy for this breach of the duty of procedural fairness is to remit the matter back to the Board for a new hearing only on the narrow issue of whether Mr. Singh should be named as a landlord in the orders.
. Jajo v. Ontario (Transportation)

In Jajo v. Ontario (Transportation) (Div Ct, 2021) the Divisional Court was faced with a series of administrative foul-ups started initially by failure to follow statutory [HTA Regs] notice requirements when purporting to revoke a driving instructor's license. The case is mostly fact-based but is an example of how serious (and here, near-comical) the implications can be of failure to give proper notice. The court characterized the situation as a rare abuse of process and granted the license-holder's judicial review application.



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Last modified: 06-02-25
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