After a 25-year-old Jamaican-Canadian had suspicions about a potential landlord, he took his rental discrimination case to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) and won.
When asked to provide her comments on the case, Professor Reem Bahdi said that statistically, it's not common to see a discrimination complaint before the HRTO end up in favour of the applicant.
She pointed to 2018-19 numbers published by Tribunals Ontario that show that of the overall applications received by the HRTO, only 65 received decisions. Of the 65 cases, discrimination was found in only 19.
"At the end of the day, it's not only just a question of it taking a long time [to process], but for a complainant to statistically get a result that says there was discrimination here and you're entitled to a remedy … it's actually quite rare for that to happen," she said.