Substantial Compliance (LTB)

TSL-29748-12 (Re), 2012 CanLII 98084 (ON LTB)

18. I say this for two primary reasons. First of all the wording of section 212 is paramount: “Substantial compliance with this Act respecting the contents of forms, notices or documents is sufficient.” I would point out that this provision does not say substantial compliance with the Act is sufficient; rather, it says substantial compliance with the “contents of forms, notices or documents” is sufficient. In other words, what section 212 means is that the mandatory requirements of the Act are not up for debate, but mistakes or typographical errors in filling out forms will not invalidate an otherwise valid document.

19. Second, if it is accepted (as the Board Member in TNL-18527 accepted) that a mistake with respect to a mandatory requirement of the Act in a notice can somehow be waived or forgiven, the entire legislative scheme then becomes a shifting sand of unknowable requirements. Nothing will be certain; no one will be able to figure out if a notice is valid or not. A Member would have to decide the subjective question of whether or not the notice was too misleading or too confusing in each instance, including those cases where the recipient of the notice was not present to testify as to what they thought it meant. Such a result would defeat one of the purposes of the Act, which is to informally and efficiently resolve disputes between landlords and tenants as it would inevitably lead to endless hearings about what the recipient of a notice thought it meant.