My Eviction Hearing is on Wednesday
- Leah Dyck
- Jun 7
- 8 min read
I’ll start off by saying that Justice Fraser still hasn’t made a decision yet on my anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss Barrie Housing’s defamation action against me.
I’m guessing she won’t make a decision until after my eviction hearing, which is happening next week on June 11th. And the June 11th hearing could potentially take all day. It sounds similar to a motion hearing. Parties attend a virtual court room, all at the same time, and then one case is heard after another. Due to the complexity of my case, I’m also guessing we’ll be heard near the end of the day. Usually, people with simple and quick issues are heard first.
My potential eviction…
In Barrie Housing’s N7 Notice, the reason given for ending my tenancy is marked as:
Reason 1: Your behaviour or the behaviour of someone visiting or living with you has seriously impaired the safety of another person and this behaviour occurred in the residential complex.
Within Barrie Housing’s N7’s Schedule A, the only allegation regarding my actions committed on the premise of my residential complex is stated in the fourth paragraph, which accuses me of “plastering defamatory posters across her apartment complex and relentlessly urged others to join her smear campaign by creating a private social media group”.
These “defamatory posters” were typed letters folded in enclosed envelopes and taped to the doors of 84 units. A copy of this letter is provided below:
In the case of OLEMED CORPORATION v Soriano, para. 14 states:
“…an N7 notice should include details about the alleged ‘actual impairment of safety’, and the ‘real risk of impairment of safety’.”
In the case of Toronto Community Housing Corporation v Desousa, para. 9 states:
“… the question to be answered is whether the tenant’s actions put someone at serious risk of physical harm.”
In the TSL-94634-18 (Re) case, para. 7 states:
“…I heard no evidence from any other tenant, which eliminates substantial interference with other tenants…”
In my opinion, Barrie Housing’s N7 Notice doesn’t have the elements of the conduct for serious impairment of safety or even the risk of serious impairment of safety. And when Barrie Housing finally submitted its evidence brief, it provided endorsements from the defamation action and my derivative application, how much money I owe it (for costs of the legal proceedings, which still aren’t finished), a sworn affidavit from Barrie Housing’s CEO, Mary-Anne Denny-Lusk, from December 2024, and a bunch of exhibits, which are screenshots of the posts I’ve published, most of which are about Barrie Housing or its staff, their negligence and how their negligence has impacted me and my community.
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading a lot of cases involving evictions or attempted evictions and I’ve not come across any cases in which a landlord evicted a tenant for doing any of the things I’ve done. I found one case where the landlord tried to evict a tenant for similar reasons, but the landlord wasn’t successful. In the case of Plan A Real Estate v. Tenants (British Columbia, 2024), which I found through ChatGBT, a Vancouver landlord, Plan A Real Estate, sued tenants for defamation after they protested and distributed flyers alleging illegal eviction practices. The landlord also attempted to evict one tenant, citing the defamation lawsuit among other reasons. The eviction attempt was dismissed by British Columbia's Residential Tenancy Branch (RTB).
If you’re interested in reading my “defence argument”, you can read it below. I’ve also included redacted “delivery data” of the Barrie Housing tenants my food charity delivered food to between 2022 and 2024 as well (this data is at the very end of the document). I thought it might help show that my presence in my residential complex is the exact opposite of what Barrie Housing is accusing me of:
The LTB’s Jurisdiction RE Defamation Claims
Does the Landlord and Tenant Board (LTB) have jurisdiction over Barrie Housing’s claims of defamation?
Although I don’t know for sure, I don’t think so.
In the Supreme Court of British Columbia case of Tan v British Columbia (Housing Management Commission), the plaintiff was Mr. Li Wen Tan (Mr. Tan), a tenant in a building owned by the British Columbia Housing Management Commission (BC Housing). Mr. Tan was self-represented and had filed numerous claims against BC Housing, which were eventually assigned to a case management judge, the Honourable Justice Lamb. Justice Lamb heard more than 20 lawsuits filed by Mr. Tan against various defendants including BC Housing.
In this case, there was a point when Justice Lamb determined which causes of action were to be remitted to the RTB for adjudication. At para. 11, Justice Lamb states:
Most of the plaintiff’s claims are grounded in the parties’ landlord/tenant relationship and fall within the jurisdiction of the RTB. The only clear exception is the claim of defamation arising from the material facts pleaded in para. 37 of Part 1 of the amended notice of civil claim. The plaintiff’s defamation claim arises from a discreet incident and is, in my view, severable from the claims that arise from the landlord/tenant relationship.
And at para. 15, Justice Lamb further described the jurisdiction of the RTB, stating:
The RTB does not have exclusive jurisdiction over a claim by a tenant against a landlord where the legal basis for the claim is not the Residential Tenancy Act or the tenancy agreement…
And at para. 22, Justice Lamb stated:
In short, other than the defamation claim, the viable claims pleaded in the amended notice of civil claim may be described as a landlord/tenant dispute that generally fall within the RTB’s jurisdiction.
Barrie Housing’s Refusal to Produce Financial Documents
In the Divisional Court case of Re Carter and Phillips et al., the applicant was Carole Carter (Ms. Carter), a tenant in subsidized housing in the City of London, Ontario. In 1986, Ms. Carter commenced an application to recover payment of unlawful rents from the landlord, Oxford Square Investments, Viscount Properties, Aaron Construction Limited.
Ms. Carter made an application for rent review. I also made an official request for a review of my rental calculations under section 156 of the Housing Services Act, to the County of Simcoe, who funds Barrie Housing.
Back in 1986, subsidized housing programs were run through the Province of Ontario. In December 2000, responsibility for social housing in Ontario was transferred to municipalities.
In order to substantiate Ms. Carter’s evidence, she required the records for the year 1976 (10 years prior to commencing her application). Those records had been removed from the government records section and the respondent residential tenancy commissioner refused to issue a summons requiring the section to produce her records. He also refused to require the landlords to produce her records.
This is similar to the County of Simcoe, who’s refused to make Barrie Housing produce the financial breakdown document regarding how it determined my 2022 overcharges and also refused to make Barrie Housing explain how it calculated my Rent-Geared-to-Income (RGI) rental calculations at any point in time during my 16-year tenancy.
In Ms. Carter’s case, she brought an application to quash the decision of the commissioner, which was successful. At para. 10, the Divisional Court stated:
… VII. Conclusions
1. The applicant (tenant) has the onus or the burden of proving her case before the commissioner; however, in order for her to prove her case, it is necessary for her to show the history of the rent charged by the landlord for that apartment over the years. That information is in the records of the commissioner or its predecessor and in the records of the landlord. In the case before us, the tenant is thwarted because the landlord will not volunteer to produce the information of the history of the rents of that apartment, and the commissioner has refused to issue a summons to produce the commissions' records. He has also refused to issue a summons to the landlord to produce its records. The tenant has her rights under ss. 127 and 129 of the Residential Tenancies Act, but finds herself locked out from potentially relevant information on the history of the rent paid over the years for the particular apartment in question.
The Divisional Court granted Ms. Carter a mandamus order, compelling the Residential Tenancy Commissioner, namely, Jeffrey M. Phillips, to issue a summons to: (a) Richard Ramsey, of the government records section to produce its file pertaining to Apt. 408, 769 Second St., London, Ontario, and; (b) to issue a summons to the landlord Oxford Square Investments, Viscount Properties, Aaron Construction Limited, to produce its records pertaining to the said rental unit at its hearing of the Residential Tenancy Commission.
If you’re interested in reading my ‘Reply Response’ to Barrie Housing’s evidence brief, you can read it here:
After doing all this research, I feel a lot better about not being evicted next week. I was really worried for a while because of Justice Christie’s interlocutory injunction from October 29, 2024. I’m 99 percent sure she didn’t read my materials, and I think she read Barrie Housing’s allegations, decided they were true and decided to do whatever Barrie Housing wanted.
Couldn’t the same thing happen at the eviction hearing though?
Its possible. But now I know I need to “speak the exhibits into existence”. I didn’t know that with Justice Christie, so I didn’t do that. I also didn’t provide a Confirmation of Motion document to the hearing in front of Justice Christie. When I was in front of Justice Casullo, I heard her tell another person that because he didn’t submit a Confirmation of Motion document, she didn’t read his materials. That doesn’t necessarily mean Justice Christie didn’t read my materials though. Every time I was in front of Justice McKelvey, I also never submitted a Confirmation of Motion document yet he always read my materials. Its very easy to tell if someone has read your materials or not. I mostly think Justice Christie didn’t read my materials because when I raised the issue of Barrie Housing's refusal to provide the audit document, her response was “what audit?”, and then eventually, she said: “that’s not what this is about!” (referncing the audit document and my allegations of fraud). At the time, I didn’t know Barrie Housing had been dishonest about all the reasons for my 2022 overcharge (and I still don’t know all the reasons for my 2022 overcharge but since seeing Justice Christie, I know more of the reasons, thanks to my ODSP ledger). I just feel so violated as a human being because of the way Justice Christie handled this.
In the recorded phone call between myself and Mary-Anne from April 26, 2022, Mary-Anne told me that the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) started paying my rent directly to Barrie Housing in October (she was referring to October 2021). This recorded phone call can be listened to here. And the part where Mary-Anne said ODSP began paying my rent directly to Barrie Housing is at time stamp 11:54.
But when I finally got my ODSP ledger, two days after seeing Justice Christie, I discovered that ODSP re-started paying my rent directly to Barrie Housing in July 2017. If Barrie Housing had provided the audit document I asked for, Justice Christie would have seen that Barrie Housing was lying. Here’s a copy of my ODSP ledger:
This isn’t Barrie Housing’s only lie though.
On April 13, 2020, I emailed Barrie Housing employee Jolene Hanson to let her know I was laid off that day, from my employer Metro News 360:
But on September 28, 2021, a year and a half later, Barrie Housing employee Soula White told me my rent was based on Earned Income from Metro News 360 (and CPP-Disability):
And on December 19, 2024, the County of Simcoe gave me an “unofficial review” of my rental calculations, and told me that once I provided Barrie Housing with updated information, my rent was properly reduced immediately. There was no mention of my rent being reduced as a result of being laid off.
And instead of dealing with this and admitting Barrie Housing made another mistake in my RGI rental calculations, Barrie Housing wants to evict me for telling other tenants what it's done to me.
I can’t believe the County of Simcoe wants Mary-Anne in charge of its most vulnerable resident’s RGI housing… but I guess if your only priority is making profits, then Mary-Anne is the perfect person for the job.
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