In 1998, I was involved in a landlord/tenant case as a tenant. My landlady wanted to evict my young son and myself under what I felt were questionable circumstances. The housing tribunal, a quasi-judicial agency under the Province of Ontario, ultimately ruled that I was harassing my landlady by accusing her. But several years later, some executives acknowledged that I had legitimate grounds to make a case for sexual harassment against her. By that time, it was too late to prosecute the matter and I wasn't seeking to do so. At the beginning, I had voluntarily made an agreement to move out of my apartment because I wasn't sure of winning the eviction case. There were procedures that followed with requests for a review of the initial hearing, etc. The agency also told me after the follow-up began that I was entitled to turn in new evidence or information, if I had some to provide; and I did that. There was some dispute over comments I had made to my landlady but they happened only after I'd received notice of eviction.* [Will not write further about those comments, at least for now.] If anybody would like to confirm information about the sexual harassment matter, they could contact the Ministry of the Attorney General for Ontario at the Crown Law Office - Civil division. There have been lawyers and public officials who have acknowledged this matter privately but, so far, there has been no public explanation or apology. Otherwise, if anyone in Ontario or Canada has a complaint about how information was handled, they could try contacting their local politicians and informing them. There was no public statement made about my landlord/tenant matter, to my knowledge, except in the original documents. That particular agency has since been closed down and a new one opened in its place. But word can also travel by word of mouth and other means, which I believe it has. There are criminal charges which were directly or indirectly connected to the above matter. My landlady made no criminal complaints about me but there was another problem. Will be writing about it separately, while respecting some legal restrictions placed on me. *Note added on January 8, 2013: It wasn't just what I said to my landlady but there was a naive and politically-incorrect comment in the documents I filled out for the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal before the hearing. And it wasn't that I meant any harm by it but I was inexperienced in dealing with gay people and didn't know the right language to say that I believed she was harassing me. Also, I hadn't thought my language through very carefully and didn't have enough perspective on the matter. Note added on January 24, 2013: Have recalled that I also made the politically-incorrect comment at the ORHT hearing. Please see a new blog post on January 24 for further information.
Note added on August 13, 2019: Have recently acknowledged that I made the adjudicator nervous when I didn't explain my case properly at the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal hearing...and I could've withdrawn my case.... The adjudicator thought I was just trying to put my landlady down because of her sexual orientation.... Even though the adjudicator went on to make a mistake in law, I believe it was my responsibility to make my case--which I was doing without a lawyer...! I could've lost by default.... It would've been fair....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment