How LTB Adjudicators Are Trained and What They Can (and Can't) Decide

Who adjudicators generally are

Adjudicators at the Landlord and Tenant Board are the decision-makers who conduct hearings and issue orders resolving disputes between landlords and tenants under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006. They aren't judges in a traditional courtroom sense, but they exercise a similar kind of authority within the specific scope of the Board's jurisdiction — meaning the types of disputes the Act and the LTB's governing rules say the Board can address. Many adjudicators come from legal or related professional backgrounds, though the specific qualifications and composition of the Board's roster of adjudicators can vary over time.

Understanding who adjudicators are and what their role actually involves helps set realistic expectations going into a hearing — they are there to apply the law to the facts presented, not to act as an advocate for either side or to fill gaps in a party's case.

How adjudicators are generally appointed and trained

Adjudicators are generally appointed to the Board through a formal process, and they typically receive training specific to the Board's procedures, the Residential Tenancies Act, and the kinds of issues that regularly come up in landlord-tenant disputes. This training is generally intended to help adjudicators run hearings fairly, apply the law consistently, and handle procedural questions that arise during a hearing, such as requests for adjournments or disputes about whether evidence was properly disclosed.

Because the Board handles a high volume of cases covering recurring issues — notices of termination, arrears of rent, maintenance obligations, and so on — adjudicators generally develop familiarity with these common fact patterns over time, which can make hearings more efficient even as each case is still decided on its own specific facts.

Their actual role during a hearing

During a hearing, an adjudicator's role generally includes managing the proceeding itself — confirming who's present, explaining the process, keeping the hearing focused on the relevant legal issues, and making sure both sides have a genuine opportunity to present their case and respond to the other side. They generally ask clarifying questions where needed, address procedural issues as they come up, and ultimately weigh the evidence and legal arguments presented before issuing a decision.

What they generally don't do is build a case for either party. The burden of presenting relevant evidence and making a clear legal argument rests with the parties themselves (or their representatives), and an adjudicator's role is to assess what's put in front of them rather than to go looking for a stronger version of either side's case.

What an adjudicator can generally decide

An adjudicator can generally decide the specific legal questions raised by an application properly before the Board — for example, whether a notice of termination was validly served and whether the grounds for it are established, whether rent arrears are owed and in what amount, whether a landlord has met their maintenance obligations, or whether a tenant's conduct justifies eviction under the relevant provisions of the Act. Their decision is set out in a written order that becomes legally binding once issued, defining the rights and obligations of the parties going forward.

This authority is specific and bounded by what the Residential Tenancies Act actually permits the Board to decide. An adjudicator isn't simply weighing in on who behaved more reasonably in a general sense — they're applying specific legal tests to the facts as presented.

What falls outside an adjudicator's authority

There are categories of disputes that generally fall outside what an LTB adjudicator can decide, even if they come up during the course of a hearing or feel closely related to the tenancy. Matters that belong properly to other courts or tribunals — certain kinds of personal injury claims, some property disputes unrelated to the tenancy itself, or criminal matters — are generally not within the Board's jurisdiction, regardless of how connected they might feel to the landlord-tenant relationship. Similarly, an adjudicator generally can't decide something that wasn't actually raised in the application properly before the Board, even if a party brings it up during the hearing itself.

This is one reason why framing an application carefully, and understanding what issues are actually within LTB jurisdiction, matters before filing. Raising something outside the Board's authority at a hearing, hoping the adjudicator will simply address it anyway, generally doesn't work and can distract from the issues the adjudicator actually can decide.

Independence and impartiality

Adjudicators are generally expected to act independently and impartially, deciding each matter based on the evidence and legal arguments presented rather than any personal view about landlords or tenants as a category. This impartiality is a core feature of how the Board is meant to function, and it's part of why adjudicators generally avoid engaging in conduct, inside or outside a hearing, that could create a reasonable concern about bias.

For parties attending a hearing, understanding this independence can help temper the instinct to appeal to sympathy rather than to the specific legal test at issue. An adjudicator's decision is meant to flow from the law and the evidence, not from which side seems more sympathetic in a general sense.

If you disagree with how a hearing was handled

If a party believes a hearing was handled unfairly, or disagrees with the resulting decision, there are generally limited avenues to pursue — depending on the circumstances, a party may be able to request a review of the order, or in some cases, appeal to the Divisional Court on a question of law. These options are generally narrow and time-sensitive, and they aren't a mechanism for simply relitigating a dispute because one side is unhappy with the result.

Because these options are limited, it's generally worth consulting a licensed paralegal or lawyer promptly if a party believes there are genuine grounds to challenge how a matter was decided, rather than waiting and losing the opportunity to act within the applicable time limits.

Common misconceptions about adjudicators

A common misconception is that an adjudicator will proactively investigate a dispute or seek out additional information beyond what's presented at the hearing. Generally, this isn't the case — the parties are responsible for bringing forward their own evidence and arguments. Another misconception is that adjudicators have broad discretion to decide a dispute based on general fairness, independent of what the Residential Tenancies Act actually says. In practice, their decisions are generally grounded in the specific legal framework the Act establishes, even when the outcome feels, to one side or the other, like it doesn't fully capture the fairness of the underlying situation.

A third misconception, often held by first-time participants, is that an adjudicator who asks pointed or skeptical questions of one side has already made up their mind against that party. In reality, probing questions are generally part of how an adjudicator tests the strength of the evidence on both sides, and a party shouldn't necessarily read hostility into questions that are simply part of a thorough hearing process. Similarly, some people assume that a long or complicated case automatically means a more favourable or thorough decision; the length of a hearing generally reflects the complexity of the issues raised, not a signal about which way the outcome is trending.

Understanding these limits — what an adjudicator can and generally cannot do — helps parties prepare more realistically for what a hearing can actually resolve.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Reviewed by Ryan J. Manilla, BA, JD

Legal Reviewer · Landlord Tenant Ontario