There are moments in practice that stay with you long after the hearing room empties. This was one of them.
I recently represented a tenant with a disability before the Landlord and Tenant Board. The matter was serious. The Landlord was seeking eviction based on allegations of aggressive conduct. There was video evidence. There was testimony. Police had attended. On paper, it looked heavy.
But law is never just what appears on paper. It is context. It is proportionality. It is humanity.
In my closing submissions, I began with a simple but essential principle: the Landlord must establish not only that incidents occurred, but that eviction is justified in all of the circumstances.
Yes, there was video evidence of the Tenant kicking an office door. Yes, there was testimony that she pushed a staff member during an emotionally charged interaction. The Tenant did not deny these events. We did not attempt to minimize them.
What we insisted on was context.
There was no evidence of injury. No criminal charges were laid despite police attendance. No weapons. No threats of ongoing violence. No pattern of escalating behaviour. What the evidence showed were brief, reactive incidents during a period of medical vulnerability. Not sustained aggression. Not a continuing risk.
The Landlord also relied on prior complaints from other tenants. But allegations are not proof. None of those complaints were formally investigated or substantiated. At law, untested accusations cannot become a substitute for evidence. Kung alegasyon lang, that is not enough.
The most important part of the analysis, however, was this: the Tenant lives with a disability.
After a serious accident, she now experiences chronic pain. That pain is not abstract. It affects sleep. It affects mood. It affects emotional regulation. In its wake came mental health challenges. She is now in therapy and counselling. She is actively engaged in treatment. There have been no further incidents since she began that process.
Disability is a protected ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code. Housing providers have a duty to accommodate to the point of undue hardship. That duty does not disappear because behaviour is uncomfortable or inconvenient. Where conduct is connected to disability, the Board must ask whether accommodation and support can address the issue instead of defaulting to eviction.
Eviction is the most serious remedy available. It is not a warning. It is not a fine. It is displacement. It is the loss of housing stability. It is, in many cases, the beginning of a downward spiral.
In this case, the evidence did not show an ongoing threat to the residential community. It showed a moment of poor judgment during a time of significant physical and psychological distress. A human moment. A regrettable one, yes. But not one that justifies permanent housing loss.
The Tenant expressed genuine remorse. She took responsibility. She sought treatment. She made changes. That matters. Rehabilitation matters. Growth matters.
In my closing, I asked the Member to see the proportionality. To see the difference between punishment and protection. To recognize that eviction, in these circumstances, would be disproportionate.
We requested that the application be dismissed. In the alternative, if the Board had concerns, we submitted that a conditional order would be far more appropriate than termination of the tenancy.
When I delivered those submissions, I felt the weight of what was at stake. Hindi ito simpleng argumento lang. This was someone’s home. Someone’s stability. Someone’s chance to continue healing without the trauma of displacement.
I have shared the full video of my closing argument on YouTube for those who want to see how the submissions unfolded in real time. Not because it was dramatic. Not because it was perfect. But because transparency in advocacy matters.
We often talk about access to justice in abstract terms. But access to justice sometimes looks like this: standing up and reminding a decision maker that disability requires accommodation, that context matters, and that the harshest remedy should not be imposed where a measured response will do.
At the end of the day, advocacy is not about theatrics. It is about clarity. It is about fairness. It is about insisting that the law be applied not only strictly, but justly.
And sometimes, it is about reminding the room that behind every application number is a human being trying to hold on to home.
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