Human Rights Tribunal Considering Dismissing Trafficked Girl’s Eviction Case
- Leah Dyck
- Mar 22
- 2 min read
If you’ve been keeping up with me online over the last nine months, then you know I’ve been bringing to light a lot of the County of Simcoe’s Social Services department’s seriously wrong problems. As you also probably know, I ran a food security charity between 2021 and 2024 (Fresh Food Weekly), and during this time, I witnessed these problems up-close and constantly.
So while I’m trying to get Barrie Housing to return all the money it stole from its tenants, I’m also trying to help one of the recipients of my food charity who was rescued from sex-trafficking a few years back.
In January, I asked her if she’d like to file an Application Form 1 with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO), against her old landlord, Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. and the County of Simcoe. Long story short, she asked the County of Simcoe if she could be transferred to another building because friends of her trafficker would frequent her building to sell drugs. When she’d see them, she’d have panic attacks and felt that her life was in danger again. But the County of Simcoe refused to transfer her. This happened in 2022.
Fast-forward two years later, to 2024, Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. unlawfully evicted her because she has a super friendly but scary-looking dog, which is a registered Emotional Support Animal (ESA) and was accused of "attacking" her building's maintenance guy, without any evidence. In fact, the trafficked girl provided this written letter of support from a registered social worker to the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) as evidence:
But she was evicted anyways.
Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. and the County of Simcoe both want this case dismissed now and the HRTO is considering it.
The County of Simcoe has claimed they had no knowledge of the trafficked girl’s situation, and that this case doesn’t fall within the HRTO’s one-year limitation’s period. And both Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. and the County of Simcoe are saying the issues raised in this HRTO Application were already addressed with the LTB (these issues weren't even raised, let alone addressed, by the way).
The HRTO emailed the trafficked girl and asked her to respond with a Form 3, stating it was considering dismissing her case because the respondents said the issues in this case were already dealt with through the LTB. I was able to find a really nice lawyer here in Barrie, who agreed to meet with myself and the trafficked girl for a free consultation. I really wanted to make sure that I did everything I could to ensure the HRTO doesn’t dismiss her case (like it was about to dismiss mine before I withdrew it).
By the time our one-hour consultation finished, the lawyer suggested the protected Code ground was disability and she thought the connection to this protected Code ground and the discrimination was that the County of Simcoe and Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. left the trafficked girl in an unsafe situation by denying her a transfer.
Her Form 3 Reply is due on Monday, March 24, 2025, and we submitted it yesterday (Friday, March 21st):
What do you guys think about all this? Do you think the County of Simcoe and Gateway Co-operative Homes Inc. discriminated here?
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