Tribunals Ontario Annual Report Changed After It Was Tabled and Released to the Public
Tribunals Ontario made changes to its 2024-25 Annual Report after it was tabled in the Legislature and released to the public. The legal authority for making these changes is not clear and Tribunals Ontario has not responded to our request for clarification.
Under section 13.1 of the Adjudicative Tribunal Accountability, Governance, and Appointments Act (ATAGA), Tribunals Ontario is required to submit its Annual Report to the responsible Minister (for Tribunals Ontario, the Attorney General) no later than 90 days after the end of its fiscal year end, which was March 31, 2025. Tribunals Ontario met this deadline and submitted the Report to the Minister on June 30, 2025. The Annual Report reported on the period April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025.
In accordance with ATAGA and the Management Board of Cabinet Agencies and Appointments Directive, the Minister tabled the Annual Report (with the Clerk’s office, since the Legislature was not sitting) on August 29, 2025. The Annual Report was then made public and posted on the Tribunals Ontario website, sometime in October or November 2025.
The version of the Report that was made public contained at least two changes from the version that was tabled. The data for the Landlord and Tenant Board and the Human Rights Tribunal was amended to include information about a reduction in the backlogs of those tribunals that was achieved between March 31, 2025 (the end date of the period covered by the Annual Report), and September 23, 2025.
It is unusual for an Annual Report to include data about a period after the period covered by the Annual Report, and the legal authority for amending an Annual Report after it has been tabled is not clear. However, it is at least obvious from the document that these changes were made.
But another change was made without any indication of the change.
The version of the Report that was tabled and made publicly available included information about how cases at the Landlord and Tenant Board were disposed of, including the percentage of cases resolved at a hearing, at mediation, or through withdrawals.
The revised version provided different information about how cases were disposed of.
It appears that the information in the original version reflected dispositions in the previous year, and the change was made to correct that. The significance of the difference between the original version and the amended version is discussed below.
In past years, errors of this sort were identified and corrected in the Annual Report for the following year, creating a transparent process in official documents. There may be other methods for correcting an error in a document that has been tabled in the Legislature, but any such methods must surely be transparent and make clear in some way that the change has been made.
Tribunal Watch wrote to Tribunals Ontario about this issue on May 15, 2026. We suggested that in future any changes to the Annual Report which are made after the date of the Annual Report be noted in the body of the Report itself. We also asked for confirmation about any other changes that may have been made to the Report.
We have not received a reply.
Historically, Annual Reports and other official documents were published in paper form. They could not be changed without a re-release of the document. Later, official documents were released in a PDF version, making it difficult to change. The Tribunals Ontario Annual Report is now released only in an html version. While this may improve accessibility, the document can also be easily changed. A Tribunal’s Annual Report is supposed to be an official government document. If it is changed after it is tabled and made public, which is the official document?
Our own experience provides an example of problems that can arise when these documents are changed after they are tabled and released. On November 14, 2025, we issued a Statement about the LTB, based on the information in the Annual Report as it existed at that time. The Statement included an analysis of how cases were disposed of at the LTB and compared the productivity of the current LTB adjudicators with the productivity of LTB adjudicators before the creation of Tribunals Ontario.
In 2018-19, when in-person hearings were the norm, the LTB had 51 adjudicators and resolved 48,480 cases through a hearing, or an average of 950 cases per adjudicator. Based on the data in the Annual Report as it existed at the time of our report, we found that 133 adjudicators in 2024-25 resolved 50,828 applications through a hearing, for an average of 382 cases per adjudicator. Based on the revised information, the 133 adjudicators resolved 70,294 applications through a hearing, for an average of 528 cases per adjudicator. Even accounting for the fact that there were more part-time members in 2024-25, the revised data still indicates that the 2024-25 LTB adjudicators are less efficient than the 2018-19 adjudicators.
The original data indicated that 29% of applications were withdrawn in 2024-25. The revised data indicates that 15% of applications were withdrawn. The revised data indicates that 10% of cases were resolved through mediation, whereas the original data indicated that only 6% were resolved through mediation.
Conclusion
Tribunal Watch Ontario calls on the government to create protocols to prevent official documents such as Annual Reports from being revised after they have been tabled in the Legislature and released to the public.