Third-Party Property Managers
The Law Society of Upper Canada v. Chiarelli, 2014 ONCA 391 (CanLII)
[22] A review of the evidence before the application judge clearly supports his finding that the appellant has been providing unlicensed legal services. There can be no doubt that these services, including participating in a mediation and attending hearings, qualify as the provision of legal services under the Law Society Act. Indeed, the thrust of the appellant’s submissions both before the application judge and on appeal was not that he was not engaged in the provision of legal services, but that he had a right to do so because he was a landlord and thus had a right to self-represent. Accordingly, there was ample evidence upon which the application judge could base his decision to issue an injunction.
[25] The question that remains is whether the appellant as a landlord under the Residential Tenancies Act has a right to self-represent. For the following reasons, I conclude that he does not.
[26] First, there is nothing in the Residential Tenancies Act that explicitly grants the appellant any right to self-represent. The act is silent on whether a landlord can be self-represented.
[28] The only legislation which explicitly deals with the right to self-representation is the Law Society Act. Section 8(3) of that statute permits self-representation in the limited circumstance where an individual “is acting on his or her own behalf”. That exception is not applicable in the case at bar, because, quite simply, the appellant is not acting on his own behalf; he is acting on behalf of his client.
[29] Although the appellant may be considered a landlord for the purposes of certain aspects of the Residential Tenancies Act, this does not change the fact that he is providing legal services to a third party. Any obligations or rights flowing from proceedings before the Board, to the extent that they impact on the appellant at all (e.g. orders under ss. 204 or 205 of the Residential Tenancies Act to pay monies or costs to a tenant), are derivative in nature. They flow from the fact that the appellant is providing services to the property owner. If the appellant were not acting for a client in any given case, he would not have any interest in the proceeding and thus no standing.
[30] Statutes are to be interpreted harmoniously. It is presumed that the legislature spoke with one voice and did not intend to contradict itself: Ruth Sullivan, Sullivan on the Construction of Statutes, 5th ed. (Markham: LexisNexis Canada Inc., 2008), at p. 412.
[39] I find that the appellant has no right to self-represent before the Board. The appeal is, therefore, dismissed, save for an amendment to the terms of the injunction to limit the prohibition contained therein to an order prohibiting the appellant from appearing before the Board on behalf of his clients or on behalf of himself, save for situations where he is an owner of a property subject to a proceeding before the Board.
