CHRONICLE OF A REAL LIFE LANDLORD TENANT BOARD “GREENMAIL” CASE
I must confess that it is guilt that has kept driving me to write this ebook. This ebook is the sole reason for my having come out of my well deserved and seriously cherished retirement. I’ve put my retirement aside a few times now but the guilt just keeps coming back to haunt me. I don’t believe that as a patriotic Canadian I can just ignore this cancer that is sweeping our nation.
The driving force behind my writing these ebooks is the realization that our precious Canadian democracy is being knowingly and wilfully threatened by cons exploiting innocent and unsuspecting Ontario landlords by actually using LTB as their weapon to get away with their nefarious schemes. Left unchallenged this increasingly common everyday scam will destroy or nation as they have already destroyed hundreds if not thousands of Canadian landlords and their families.
Cons and snake oil salesmen can romantically appear as some sort of movers, shakers, and/or loveable horse thieves. They posses a unique type of radar that enables them to “see each other from afar” which you will see in this instance led two cons, each with their own unique agendas, to team up to further their foals by targeting the landlord.
This ebook shows you in real time (academics consistently prove totally unaware of this dimension of the reality that cons even exist) how cons work and the majority of people have no idea of how these cons have corrupted our justice system. In this case one of the cons is a self-proclaimed “highly educated lawyer”.
Cons thrive everywhere in the shadows and feed off of those who remain ill-informed of their existence, and/or nefarious ways and tactics. You will become familiar with all of this while reading these one of a kind ebooks.
When the parties first met, before entering into negotiations over the lease, the landlords informed the tenant of their interest to build-out the basement, and that they were first in line in the spring to have a stamped concrete deck added to the backyard.
The landlords retained a Realtor to prepare a lease that included the deck project to safeguard for when, in the spring the backyard would turned into a construction site, that there would be no confusion.
The landlord/tenant relationship was uneventful for the first eight months of the twelve month lease. The landlords informed the tenant prior to entering into the lease that they were building out the basement at the termination of the one year lease (specific date included using LTB’s required form and verbiage .
Shortly after moving into the property the tenant notified the landlord of a small water leak from the fridge which the landlords had taken care of the same day. Shortly thereafter the tenant complained about poor heat distribution in the house. The landlords replaced the furnace installing a top of the line high efficiency furnace without hesitation.
The tenant represented in his Rental Application that he had just sold his principal residence of some 20 years and boasted of his extensive knowledge that: “Ontario’s and Canada’s real estate markets were about to implode” and that “he would be buying again in the following summer when prices had the bottom fall out” so the fixed term rental worked for him.
With over a half century in the condo industry, I believed that he was totally off base and that the market wasn’t tanking but said nothing. The real estate market is still booming to this day over three years later.
The market had actually gotten so hot by then, that as astute real estate investors, we decided to test the market. It was at that point in time that the tenant launched his nefarious scheme. There’s an old saying “someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class” and in this case both the tenant and his shadow legal counsel qualified.
It is the value of the real life case study that is most unique here but we must start at what cons are doing using LTB to exploit honest everyday Canadians. So, let’s getting into the meat of this.
On March 23rd, 2022, with selling prices so outrageously high, we wrote our tenant a polite email to confirm his plans: “we are considering selling down the road, but have not made any ultimate decisions. We do not want to inconvenience you and would prefer to leave the decision to sell to align with your schedule to vacate the property . . . . . and also responding to his inquiry about the concrete backyard “still being first on the the contractor’s list and we’re just waiting for them to schedule the weather sensitive job. Will keep you informed. . . . .
We closed off our email with: “if we knew how long you feel you may want to stay in the home, we can schedule putting it on the market to accommodate your schedule”. All emails referred to are linked evidence in Chapter 5. Now remember, this is eight months into the 12 month lease, a point that will carry significant meaning in Chapter 5 to follow.
Having not heard back from the tenant, we followed up: “we have decided we want to put the home up for sale and in the process minimize inconvenience to you. . . . we will give you 24 hours notice prior to showings or designate one day for showings. Whatever works best for you”.
First thing the following morning the Tenant emailed back: “this is deeply concerning to me considering we are just 6 months into our 1 year lease. Does this mean you are doing this immediately or at the end of our lease”? Obviously with just a few months remaining on the lease we were intending to close any potential sale after the stated termination date set out in the lease (September 30th, 2022).
The tenant then made a rather strange assertion: “I assume this also means that you are not putting in the concrete backyard as promised either? This is a massive inconvenience for me and my family . . . “. In this email you will see that the tenant literally contradicts his own bad faith position in his T2 Complaint as he alleges in his claim for damages that due to the deck not being built when he took possession of the home he was entitled to $35,000+ in damages. Notice he just acknowledged that it was 6 months (actually 7) into the lease and this was the first mention of any issue around the cement deck.
He immediately stopped paying his rent and filed what proves to be a false, thus bad faith LTB T2 Form seeking an additional $35,000 in financial damages for no deck being present when he moved in 6 months earlier and no use of the backyard. This was his scheme in a nutshell being promoted by his shadow legal counsel and you can be sure that it is, in fact all about and only about . . . the money.
We immediately politely responded: “I can assure you it will not interfere with your life. We will be putting it on the market immediately and we are planning to close at the end of your lease. If the new buyer did want to close sooner you would simply have a new landlord and you will be paying them your rent”. Clearly there was no imposition into this tenant’s life as rental properties are bought and sold all the time.
On March 29th, we emailed him saying: “someone has requested a showing. We want to make this work for you. Tell us what works best for you”.
He replied: “Any time is really an inconvenience . . . . We need to know each person that is coming in and limit them to no more than 30 mins. We could do tomorrow between 1-3pm.”
We responded: “We have 5 people interested and will schedule tomorrow between 1 – 3pm”, to which the tenant immediately replied: “I was not expecting 5 separate people coming through you said 1. No one is coming through this weekend”. The evidence supports that his plan was never to allow any requested showings.
Advertising a property for sale but not being able to grant showings deters Realtors from showing the property so we canceled the listing. Landlords have every right under law in Ontario to sell their property and LTB publishes protocols for doing so and in this case all requirements were being followed literally to the letter.
April passed with little to no progress and/or success in getting him to co-operate. Early in the relationship we had detected him tripping up insinuating that he may have hung tv’s on walls but when asked directly he always deflected and/or distracted (common con’s move). These are signs to look for when trying to spot a con at work.
On April 30th, the Tenant sent what proves to be a very important email: “I am writing to see when the backyard will be completed. Last year you told us that you could not get it done due to timing and impending snow but that you are first on the list for this year. We are now at the beginning of May and the weather has been fine over the last two months for plenty of work to be completed”. This is the second occurrence where the tenant contradicts his own sworn false statements forming his T2.
In this email the tenant proves beyond any reasonable doubt that he filed his T2 wilfully in bad faith. We promptly replied: “With all due respect, I have no control over the cement company that I contracted last September. I don’t imagine that any concrete company would be pouring concrete when temperatures are still around and below freezing. You may want to assess your conclusion about the last two months being fine to have had it done as this morning was below freezing. I would respectfully ask that you stop making and sharing assumptions like assuming I won’t honour my word about this contractor. The job will be completed when the hired professionals say it is the proper time”.
The Tenant then replied: “well, this is the most unpleasant response from you. For the record this (cement deck) is in our lease agreement and still not completed. We simply want the work completed. Please come and pick up the bags of garbage and dirt that you left down the side of house last year since the landlords have no idea when the concrete company will come and they are supposed to pick this up last year”. None of this was important to the tenant just a couple days prior until we informed him of our intension to sell the property.
Now, it is true that the deck was mentioned in the lease agreement but it specifically did not say or suggest in any way that it was to be built prior to the tenant occupying the property. It also carried no date specific as to when the work was to be done, only that the job was scheduled to be first on the contractor’s list when they re–opened their seasonal business in the spring. The tenant was observably attempting to create a meritless conflict.
His comment about “garbage at the side of the house”, for example, was quite telling as there was no “garbage at the side of the house”. As a courtesy we had cleared the drainage and installed some bushes along the rear fence to give the Tenant a more dressed rear yard through the fall and winter but there was absolutely no garbage. Distraction is another con trait worthy of noting.
We again responded politely: “You are obviously not happy here and I’m not willing to get into a fight with you. The absolute, last thing any legitimate landlord wants to do is get into a fight with a person whom is in possession of and in control of what is in many cases a landlord’s most valuable real estate asset. There are numerous nightmare stories of massive physical damages literally destroying landlord’s properties by irrational combative tenants, setting landlords up to be greenmailed.
So, on May 2nd, I sat down once again and tried to propose a way to settle all this unexplained hostility being thrown at us by this tenant. I opened our email with: “Reasonable people communicate reasonably and if you intend to remain in our valuable property for the remainder of the lease you will be expected to communicate more professionally. If you are not happy in the property we will gladly terminate the existing lease without penalty at your request.
I went to considerable lengths to address the numerous issues he had presented, like his baseless assumption or allegation that “I wasn’t doing the deck” (it wasn’t even specifically for him and had been arranged prior to the parties ever meeting), and politely reminded him of the twenty plus thousand dollars in upgrades that we had surprised them with simply to further their enjoyment of the property. I also politely addressed his allegation of “dirt at the side of the house”.
And yet, despite his hostility and irrational behaviour, I went on to say: “I would like to put all of this behind us and agree to handle things differently in the future. I do not want uncertainty thus I will look forward to your timely reply setting out with specificity how you would like to proceed”. As usual, he chose to not reply. This fact is important as his T2 Complaint alleged that we are trying to unlawfully evict him.
I summed up this email once again emphasizing: “we would be happy to continue with you as tenants but this requires a fresh approach including mutual respect and constructive dialogue”, and “If you have interest in putting this back on track simply send me an email confirming same, and give me a generic idea as to how long you would like to remain in the home and I’m confident we can work something out as long as I have some assurance that this attitude or whatever it is, will stop”. Again he alleged to LTB that the landlords are attempting to evict him, something that the facts just got in the way of but that didn’t deter him. He is stalling for a pay-off!
This particular email is a very important piece of evidence in this case, as the Tenant immediately snapped back an email: “I find your email insulting, harassing, and threatening. The landlords have a lease that does not end until September 30th. It is duly noted that you have offered multiple time for us to leave our lease early without any penalties”. I would respectfully challenge anyone who chooses to say that there is any insulting, harassing, and/or threatening content in this email piece of evidence.
This also is the first ever mention of any insulting, harassing and/or threatening behaviour and it is important that all readers read through this May 2nd letter (chapter 5) closely to fully understand that no such content exists to support the tenant’s claim here.
It is also important that all readers of this and the other ebooks in this series, click on and read closely each linked piece of evidence (they are all hyperlinked in Chapter 5) and see the actual verbiage used as this shows you in detail how cons work. They follow systems and tactics like everyone else.
So make yourself familiar with what you see the tenant saying here, so when someone starts throwing around similar con lingo at you, you will know what to expect and how to deal with it.
From here on, the floodgates of lies, threats, insults and harassment opened up against us. Most emails from the tenant from this point forward contain the same recurring false allegations of the landlord’s harassment, threatening, insults against him, despite him not submitting a single piece of meaningful evidence to support his outrageous false allegations. His claim that the above email contained all of these ridiculous allegations shows the observable lack of integrity behind his claims.
I recall my wife saying to me “things can only go downhill from here with this tenant” when we saw on our home surveillance system this tenant out for a walk, bump into and having serious conversations with the person that would ultimately become his new shadow legal counsel bump into each other. As usual, my wife was right and from that very moment forward, the landlord and tenant relationship went not only decidedly downhill, but clean to Bazarro World and back!
In an attempt to calm things down, we wrote to the Tenant one last attempt at an amicable settlement explaining: “I had written to simply try to find out how long your family preferred to reside in the house (to avoid imposing a move onto you) and not as you emphasize ‘to cut the lease short’.
The reason we had purchased the home was to rent it. Why would we want to cut the tenancy short? I was honestly trying to smooth things out by laying out the facts, again trying to find out how long you would like to stay in the property but you have chosen to turn my effort into another fight”.
And most importantly, I signed off this attempt to settle with: “No hard feelings or animosity from my end and if you would still like to stay longer just let me know as I would still be fine with your family in the property”. The email evidence clearly shows that we had no interest in forcing him to vacate the property as he alleged.
Again, the Tenant did not show us the fundamental courtesy of a reply, leading us to believe he did no interest in stay beyond the termination date set out in the lease. Any astute observer would know these allegations of being harassed, intimidated and threats to vacate the property were patently false?
On May10th, we received an email from the backyard deck contractor informing us: “the concrete job is currently scheduled to begin end of May through mid June weather permitting”. We immediately forwarded this email on to the Tenant, who (importantly) replied “Thank you for the update”.
This evidence also is very important as the Tenant later is seen totally contradicting himself in his own bad faith T2. This allegedly constitutes an offence under LTB where in his T2 (see Chapter 4) you will see he falsely alleges “the deck was to be present at the start of the lease”. False testimony that opens an official file is a literal crime (statute 140 of the criminal code . . . . Public Mischief).
On May 23rd we received another email from the concrete contractor announcing: “they will be hopefully starting on Friday at 7:00 a.m. Please do not enter the backyard for that time period. You will need to remove all the furniture and put a tarp over the furniture and your BBQ. Also can you pick up after your dog so that the workers do not step in it”.
This evidence is also extremely important, as the Tenant contradicts his own sworn testimony in his T2 for the second time. This again constitutes an offence under LTB where he seeks a Rent Abatement of $25,000 plus $10,000 in moving costs, based on falsely alleging: “not having had use of the backyard”. These two self-disclosed contradictions show that the tenant is now committing Public Mischief, which sounds innocuous but in reality are crimes, punishable with imprisonment!
And on May 27th, we sent the Tenant a polite text: “The work in the back will probably start next week weather permitting. They’ve asked us to get confirmation from you that the furniture will be removed so that if they show up they can get started”.
The Tenant replied: “Yes everything was removed since we thought he was starting yesterday”. Clearly the tenant had enjoyed full unobstructed use and enjoyment of the backyard, yet in his T2 he is seeking 50% of his rent ($25,000) “for not having had use of the backyard”. Agreeing to move his lawn furniture, BBQ, and dog droppings shows that he had full use throughout the lease which means he was wilfully and knowingly lying.
Any contractor that I’ve ever worked with, will at best give clients a “weather permitting time window” within which they and/or their tradespeople will show up unannounced and do their work when the weather permits. They give no notice ahead of time each time, just like they don’t give you a confirmed start and/or finish date. That’s just how things work in the real world especially with outdoor construction contractors.
The contractor had quoted 10 – 12 days to pour, stamp, and cure the concrete. We had been sure to share each of the contractor’s updates with the Tenant and he had confirmed receipt each step along with way. Notice that he made no comment of the deck not being present when he moved in as he alleges in his T2.
As a policy, we always hire the top rated contractor in the area to do work for us and this contractor was re-opening their business from their winter hiatus (concrete companies don’t pour concrete before the temperature raises to a certain degree), and had assured us back in August of ’21 when we gave them our deposit that “we were first on their list this spring”.
With the skyrocketing prices in a historic ‘multi-bid-market’ and not having heard back from him, we politely informed the tenant on June 18th, that we were listing the property again emphasizing “closing on the last day of your tenancy (September 30th)”, offering options on showings, inviting the tenant to choose what “worked best for him”.
Prior to showing the property and especially with how evasive the tenant was behaving, regarding potentially having bolted televisions onto all the bedroom walls, we felt it important to inspect the property, so on June 18th we emailed the tenant LTB’s required 24 hour Legal Notice of the inspection. This is the legal notice that the tenant resorted to repeatedly alleging not having been delivered.
On June 20th, the tenant replied: “First I think we need to address the fact that the backyard is still not complete months into our lease and we are still not able to use it. This is seriously interfering with our ability to use the property we have paid for. When will this work be completed and finished? In addition after looking at what has been completed so far the back corner of the deck is approximately 3 feet off the ground with a steel grated storm sewer below. This is very dangerous”. The evidence shows this all to be untruthful.
Having had him already intentionally disrupt our efforts to sell the property, and receiving his increasingly confrontational, adversarial, and/or threatening emails common sense told me what was more than likely in store.
On the following day we showed up at the house at 5:00 p.m. as set out in our Notice. I had concluded that it would be best that I not be directly involved as I did not trust anything about this guy by this time and his shadow legal counsel had been caught on surveillance video getting her children involved in her false allegations against me. I knew he was a conman and cons always become dangerous when threatened with being exposed. By this point we had contacted a prior employer he included on his Rental Application that informed us that he ceased working there before he moved into the property.
And knowing that he was working with our lawyer/neighbour whom had already falsely accused me personally of outrageous conduct and behaviour including being “a pedophile targeting her 2 children”, I concluded that it was best to wait on the sidewalk common area in front of the house while my wife did the walk through.
She went to the door and was greeted enthusiastically but sarcastically by the Tenant. My radar was sounding-off constantly by this point, so we had concluded to audio record the entire Inspection time period and fortunately so, as the recording delivered more powerful evidence exposing him as a fraud and flat out liar.
I don’t normally talk in such harsh terms about people, but there’s just no other words to describe him/them. You want to take note of this as most people just don’t want to accept or believe that anyone could get away with such false, yet childish, bravado and conduct. The facts show that in this instance at LTB they both do.
He later in multiple irrational emails as well as included in his T2 “that my wife bullied her way into his home illegally”, despite being recorded enthusiastically meeting her at the front door and responding “absolutely” when she states that she’s there to inspect the property!
He is then caught on tape lying again, by repeatedly in numerous emails falsely alleging that “she took photos of their personal property without his consent” when in fact, he is heard standing immediately beside her as she takes only 3 photographs, one of each tv bolted onto walls, in flagrant wilful breach of the terms of the lease, and notably he is heard not say anything or expressing any opposition. Evidence does not lie, people (especially cons) do.
The Tenant is also heard requiring my wife to return home and get a mask for social distancing. The audio recording shows that it took only 4 – 5 minutes for her to return with a mask thus giving him an abundance of time to reconsider granting entry or not if he had any opposition. Yet in his T2 and a dozen or so emails he claims “being bullied into granting entry”.
When my wife entered the home the Tenant’s wife is heard on the tape rather curiously commenting: “Charles isn’t coming in” reinforcing my instincts to not allow any situation arise that would give any sort of opportunity for them to make any false or corrupt allegations. This audio recording is included in the evidence in the evidence in Chapter 5.
On June 24th the tenant sent a highly revealing email: “First you did not provide us with proper notice under the Residential Tenancies Act requirements. Then you proceeded to further bully and harass me stating that you are entering to inspect if I had installed additional TV’s or not. Since I did not want a fight and was not fully aware of all my rights, I regrettably allowed you entry to our house with my wife and young daughter there. You then proceeded to take photographs of our personal belongings without our consent which is a clear violation of our privacy rights under RTA. If you were so uncomfortable with the situation you would not have bullied your way into our home while Charles stood outside. No-one is more uncomfortable and upset than me, my wife and especially my 12 year old daughter by your invasion of our privacy and continued harassment. The audio recording clearly shows that the landlords had not invaded his privacy and that there was no bullying or harassment.
There it is! The tenant’s support for his shadow legal counsel’s false allegation attempting to paint me as a pedophile. My previous ebook “Justice Refused” shows the absolute corruption being perpetrated to this day, over a seven year period, by this shadow legal counsel who is identified as Owner#1law in Justice Refused.
The thing that is most bothersome to me about these people is their willingness to bring their own children into their corrupt scams. To me doing so is much more immoral and corrupt than scamming people. Corrupting our society’s future by training your children to falsely accuse innocent people of illegal and/or immoral conduct cannot be tolerated, yet in Ontario none of the agencies alleged to exist to protect consumers would even get involved or do anything.
It is morally unforgivable and actually sickening to have these two corrupt cons who have conspired, and threatened, and intimidated my wife and I, and showed that they are comfortable openly showing that they will stoop so low as to use their children as knowing participants in their corrupt schemes and actively condition them to commit crimes to get whatever they may want. This, in my opinion, takes this case study to a whole new level of generational corruption. The parent is the indisputable number one role model to young impressionable children and the example these children are being fed corrupts the future of our nation.
On June 25th the Tenant replied: “clearly you and Chuck are not very educated and somehow think that you are above the law”! Coincidentally, This is the identical false claim made against us earlier by his shadow legal counsel years earlier. Justice Refused shows the evidence.
His new abbreviation changing my name Charles to “Chuck” shows a rather childish attempt to further provoke me into fighting with him, and this was becoming quite consistent. He continues: “you just incriminated yourself in this past email. Just to be clear 1. First you did not correctly meet the requirement to enter our property. Your reasoning was you decided to ‘audit’ me on if I have TV’s mounted which again is not a reason permitted to enter our premises! 2. You violated our privacy rights under RTA when you AMDITEDLY (I think he means ADMITTEDLY) took pictures of our personal belongings without our consent which is STRICTLY prohibited BY LAW! 3. Our agreement clearly states in it that a cement patio in the backyard will be provided which to date is still not completed . . . . Sorry if you feel being held accountable to our lease agreement is an inconvenience to you or as you have continually improperly called it ‘harassment’. This repeated reference to his fabricated issue over the back deck shows a conscious attempt to build his bad faith case. Evidence contradicts him on all three points.
His email continues: We would not have rented the property if this was not included. Not only is this NOT completed as of today but you have ADMITTEDLY created a dangerous situation in our backyard for my family and I. You continue to send us harassing and threatening emails and threatening notes, as evidence by all your emails including the previous one! I am not sure why you continue to take this aggressive course of action when we have been perfect model tenants paying out rent! My family and I are completely uncomfortable and fear for our safety with you or Chuck entering our home or being on the property anywhere for any reason as you have chosen to violate our rights and fear for what else you might do to towards us! To date you still have not fulfilled your obligations under our rental agreement. We will be seeking rent abatement for 35% of the current monthly value for every month that the landlords have not been able to enjoy the cement patio in our backyard that forms a part of our agreement”.
His opening sentence here puts to rest any lingering doubt over his conscious and intentional lying as we have already established that the entire deck issue was a lie. And now, here we see him reshaping his corrupt scheme to alleging “the deck being dangerous to him and his family”.
On June 26th my wife, growing a little testy, answered: “I’m not sure who Chuck is. I don’t know any chucks. My husband is Charles. You have identified a dangerous situation and under the Act the landlords are within our rights. The fact that you are in breach of our lease on many points is grounds to evict you. No-one is threatening you to fear for your safety. Please conduct yourself honestly and ethically”.
The tenant, within minutes replied: “Once again you continue to harass and threaten me after repeatedly asking you to STOP! I will be clear, due to your aggressive, harassing, and threatening behaviour, I fear for the safety of myself, my wife and my children and because of this behaviour CHUCK AND YOURSELF ARE NOT PERMITTED ON THE PROPERTY AT ANY POINT! IF YOU OR CHUCK CHOSE TO ATTEMPT TO COME ON THE PROPERTY The landlords WILL CONSIDER THIS AN ACT OF AGRESSION (I think he means AGGRESSION)! This false claim about being in fear can also be seen in his shadow legal counsel’s false claims in Justice Refused (first ebook in this Series).
The evidence show that tenant continued bombarding us with this type of emails showing his instability with ALL CAPS baseless threats and lies, falsely alleging that it was him that was being harassed, intimidated, and threatened by us. This is called projection, and projection is what cons do. They make false claims against you that are actually exactly what they are doing to you.
When you see arbitrary false claims against you in writing you’ve got to step back and reflect on this example as these emails were written expressly for LTB whom you will see failed us due to not even reading our Answer to the tenant’s bad faith pleadings. It didn’t matter to him that he had absolutely no evidence because his shadow legal counsel’s plan was to make our lives so miserable that we would give into his greenmail. They had assumed that we would be forced to settle financially to get him to vacate.
We were simply wanting to insure that he would vacate the property and there was no guarantee that he would without the Hearing a Ruling. The lease contract contained a specific expiry date required by LTB. So on June 27th we filed an LTB Form N-13 “Notice to improve the property by building out the basement which requires a Permit requiring the tenant to move out.
The LTB required Standard Lease Form states: “This tenancy agreement is for a fixed length of time ending on 2022/09/30”. We had informed the tenant prior to entering into the lease and his moving in that we were building out the basement starting the day after the lease terminated. We had actually offered to build it out for him if he wanted to wait another 60 days but he declined.
This is another serious issue that must be dealt with, as LTB’s position here contradicts LTB’s own policy of automatically converting all leases to month-to-month even if the landlord and tenant are fighting and the tenant has not been paying rent.
Landlords are given absolutely no recourse or protection here even though the LTB says that improving the property is the landlord’s right. Again a massive contradiction and this last bastion of hope for landlords has been negated since! There is an illogical intellectual misfire here to a self-educated guy like me, that suggests that LTB has a fundamental misunderstanding of conventional contract law or at least believes that conventional law does not apply when relating to residential property being rented!
The N-13 is a legal LTB Notice informing a tenant of the landlord’s intention to “upgrade the home”. An N-13 entitles the tenant to $5,000 in moving expenses and even gives tenants the right to move back into the home once the upgrade is completed (this is something else that must be changed back to good old contract law phraseology as it does not account for a tenant from hell, like this one).
On June 28th we had our Paralegal send the tenant a formal reply to his June 26th ‘altered reality’ email (which by now had become almost a form letter), that simply regurgitated his same old overworked false allegations. Our reply was polite and respectful going into detailed explanation of the factual reality behind all his misinterpreted and false allegations.
And finally, on June 30th, another bombastic and very legal sounding “Forwarded email”(obviously written for him by his shadow legal counsel) containing the same old ridiculous repeated false allegations of “improper entry, violated privacy rights, the back deck, etc.”, with a crescendo: “On March 28th your client listed the property for sale on MLS in a childish rant, due to our exchange with no intentions to sell it only to further harass and interfere with our quiet enjoyment of our home as evidenced by the fact he took it off the market a few days later on April 1st. Again on June 18th he put the property up for sale on MLS and nowhere in the ad does it state that the property is currently occupied by a tenant”. This is simply a word salad of gibberish attempting to cast a cloud over the landlord deciding to list their property for sale.
July started off with some more disappointing news. For the second month in a row his rent cheque did not arrive. On July 6th, our Paralegal sent us another forwarded email obviously written by his shadow legal counsel, masquerading as being from him: “A building inspector was here on July 4th and informed your client that safety railings were required for the patio since it is 30 inches high as per building by laws. Your clients had no intention of installing safety railings. Now a city bylaw officer will be coming out to inspect the patio and will let your clients know the proper requirements to complete. Asking for two weeks to complete putting in safety railings and some landscaping is ridiculous and the landlords will not allow the landlords on the property and subject ourselves to further aggressive, threatening and harassing behaviour towards my family and I.
There is not a single factually accurate statement contained in this entire email other than the building inspector had attended the property responding to the tenant’s complaint filed with his department, but the inspector had not suggested that “a railing would be required”. Nor did the inspector acknowledge that the patio was “dangerous” or that “the deck 30 inches high”. The inspector had stated in his reply that the height of “the deck was actually only 20 inches high”.
A by-law officer also responding to the tenant’s complaint agreed with the inspector that the landlord’s submitted plan to complete the landscaping was right and reaffirming that replacing the landscaping was sufficient and that “no railing would be required”.
The by-law officer was actually appalled by the tenant’s refusal to grant entry into the backyard for the landlord to remedy what the tenant was inaccurately calling “a dangerous situation”. The by-law officer’s email reply shows his stern advice to the landlords to “tell the tenant when they are attending to satisfy his Order . . . they don’t not ask. . . . the tell”!
On July 3rd the Tenant committed the first of a number of crimes by filing a completely fabricated Complaint with the LTB under Form T-2 (see Chapter 4) seeking financial damages in the amount of $35,000. The tenant was still posturing for a cash Settlement while we were non-negotiable.
The LTB’s Form T-2 includes a section entitled “Important Information from the Landlord and Tenant Board – 1. It is an offence under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006 to file a false or misleading information with the LTB; 2. The LTB can order either the landlord or the tenant to pay the other’s costs related to the application”. More about this later in this ebook, but for now “guilty, guilty, guilty”!
In my follow-up note to the Inspector who attended the tenant’s Complaint on July 4th: “It was a pleasure meeting you the other day (July 4th) after you attended our property to inspect the height of the drop from the new deck to the ground. This is to confirm that you stated: the drop from the top of the cement deck to the drainage ditch is approximately 24” which does not exceed Code. Can you forward this email to the correct bylaw department please. Thank you for your disclosure that the deck does NOT represent a code violation and that a safety rail would resolve this dispute”.
On July 26th, the landlords emailed the Tenant with LTB’s required 24 hour Notice of showing for the following day but either she inadvertently or her computer spell check, made a simple error with the month. It would seem obvious that a 24 hour notice would be for the following day no matter what errors might occur, but not with this tenant’s contempt toward us.
In the evidence attached in the landlord’s Answer to the T2 (chapter 5) you will find an audio recorded piece of evidence showing that the Tenant was fully aware of the error on this Notice but chose not to extend the courtesy of a reply to clarify but rather, as his tone of voice gives away, arrogantly and vindictively chose to wait for the landlord to arrive with the Realtor and potential buyer in tow, simply to enable him to embarrass and hurt the landlord by turning them away. Be sure to listen to this audio recorded evidence as it gives a very sound understanding of this tenant’s true character.
On July 29th, the by-law officer issued an official Order to Comply showing 3 small unrelated issues to the tenant’s Complaint: 1. Apparently the cement contractor had poured the concrete at the entrance way to the yard three inches too close to the property line; 2. the landscaping across the back fence needed to be levelled off (which the landlords were trying to do but the tenant’s radically and unstable emails refusing entry into the back yard would not allow); and 3. cut back some of the landscaping along the rear property line. Significantly, there was no mention of the “height of the deck being a Code Violation” as repeatedly alleged by the tenant.
August 1st’s rent cheque was not delivered yet the tenant continued to reside in the property refusing to give any idea on when he intended to vacate.
On August 4th, with yet another “Forwarded email” from his shadow legal counsel, in response to another Realtor showing request, the tenant emailed our paralegal (it was easy to see that he was having fun running up the landlord’s bills) saying: “the Town of Oakville has sent legal requirements to my landlords to bring the concrete deck up to building code requirements, that I brought to their attention but they chose to ignore. While we want the work to be completed by a licensed professional since it is unsafe the way it is today and the town of Oakville inspectors confirmed this. Once again, this was done to simply harass us and interfere with our quiet enjoyment of the property which they seem to take great pleasure in. The Town of Oakville had specifically “not sent legal requirements” as the Town had discovered that the deck was not a Code Violation at all (see Order to Comply – no height restriction in chapter 5). This is a clear example of this tenant lying to LTB.
On August 5th, responding to another Realtor showing request, the Tenant (again playing messenger for his shadow-law adviser) emailed our paralegal: “You have filed an N13 notice . . . based on the fact that your clients will be doing major renovations. I am confused, how could your client be selling the property if they are planning on doing major renovations? The answer is they can’t do both. Facts show doing so is quite common.
Selling property with work to be completed prior to closing has been a very common real estate practice throughout my entire 50 year career in condos. This is yet another intentional false claim knowing that the case will more than likely never get to the Hearing stage as most small landlords are forced to give in and pay the greenmail due to them having to cover mortgage payments, taxes, and upkeep.
His email continued: We will consider this request just another attempt by your clients to interfere with our quiet enjoyment of the property and to continually harass us. This request is considered in bad faith, and unreasonable and will not be allowed. In addition your clients have continued to harass me by contacting my former employer last month attempting to get personal information, and most recently giving out my personal information to 3rd parties all without my consent. This is a complete violation of my privacy rights and a direct violation of the Privacy Laws. (More information from his misinformed want-to-be-lawyer hiding in the shadows). Your clients continue to amaze me at the lengths they will go to in an effort to harass me and my family! This will not be tolerated and I suggest you tell them to stop immediately”.
On August 9, with us still unable to access our own property’s backyard to complete the necessary work, due to the tenant’s increasingly irrational behaviour and threatening emails, we wrote to the By-law officer explaining: “Attached are documents showing we require access to our backyard to comply with the Order. The tenant will also not allow us landlords into the backyard to do the work . . . Our paralegal has filed an N4 for non- payment of rent and an N5 for interfering with with landlord. I am asking the tenant to confirm to allowing us into the backyard and he is being unreasonable. The landlords have no choice but to evict him which is a lengthy and costly process”.
An hour later we received a reply from the By-Law Officer saying: “As per the grading inspector, the height of the yard with proper setback from the property line can also be increased to comply with that 24” deck height requirement and in that case, no railing would be needed (exactly what our Plan showed).
The By-law Officer continued: “There is an Order served on the property for required work (see Order to Comply) and there is a tight time line to comply . . . . there should not be an issue for repair personnel accessing the exterior yard for something your tenant was first concerned about . . . the owner needs to ‘tell’ the tenant that they would be accessing the property for repairs and not “ask”.
On August 19th, we emailed the required 24 hours legal notice respectfully requesting another Realtor showing. On the following day, the Tenant responded to our Paralegal “Please tell your clients to stop sending us these harassing emails with their continued attempts to interfere with our quiet enjoyment of our property”.
When she showed up the following day my wife discovered that her master key would no longer open the door locks, meaning that the Tenant had changed them which is against the law. She followed up with an email: “You have changed the locks without permission. This is against the law. Please forward us with the keys A.S.A.P as the landlords have Realtor showings that you have now disrupted and interfered with”.
The landlords reported the locks being changed to Toronto Housing & Enforcement who confirmed that this was against the law and that they would contact him. They later informed us that their phone messages and/or email to him always were unanswered/ unreturned. The evidence was quite definitive including photographs of the original locks and the locks he replaced them with. When he eventually vacated he simply switched the locks back after swearing that he had not changed them to TH&E.
The Tenant then introduced another false attack by email: “You have forcibly and illegally attempted to enter our home several times and while a hearing is pending before the LTB. You continue to harass us and disseminate defamatory information to third parties. We have concrete evidence of your persistence and insidious attempts to deny us the peaceful enjoyment of our home. The plan is to get the landlord to pay them to vacate confident that most landlords, especially those with mortgages simply cannot afford the fight, especially knowing that it takes up to 2 years to even get a Hearing at LTB. LTB has created this death trap for landlords with this questionable logic.
So far in this narrative there has been these recurring allegations of persistent and insidious attempts to deny the peaceful enjoyment” yet no evidence has been submitted what-so-ever that supports the claim. This is a shakedown plain and simple.
The Tenant goes on in this email: If you attempt to contact us again in writing or in person the landlords will involve the police and have both of you charged with Criminal Harassment and Breaking and Entering. If your outrageous behaviour persists, the landlords will instruct our lawyers to pursue a civil course of action against you for your libellous activities and will seek damages in excess of $5 Million, beginning with an injunction to stop the harassment and libel, and place a lien on all your properties”.
Now let’s be sure we’re all on the same page here, the Tenant and his family are living in our property (that he interestingly keeps calling “his”) while refusing to pay his rent, refusing to communicate in any way, or even allow the landlords into the backyard to complete the work that he complained about to the municipality, and now he’s introducing another threat of another $5 Million dollar law suit.
Here, he is simply posturing to get money to vacate the property. I’ve already made it clear that this is “Greenmail” and it is better legally known as “Criminal Fraud”! What I am most disturbed about is that LTB has Ruled on this case and closed its file while oblivious to the observable Fraud committed in its very presence. And despite my detailed Answer (Chapter 5) laying it out clearly to them prior to the Hearing that 1. This case is moot; and 2. It is itself a crime of filing a bad faith claim!
The evidence shows that LTB did not even read my (the landlord’s/defendant’s) Answer therefore knew absolutely no material facts of the case. LTB was wholly unaware of my Answer and equally as unaware to the Tenant’s T2 (Chapter 4) despite the T2 the Claim seeking damages being legal requirement/step #1 and my Answer being the necessary legal requirement/step #2 in LTB’s own legal procedures and practices.
LTB’s observable dysfunction represents a literal flame to which the moths (cons) are attracted. The shadow legal counsel in this matter was fully aware of this dysfunction at LTB and can be seen exploiting it all along the way.
Once the word got out to cons all over the map (remember that con radar I told you about) they responded immediately and came running and have been exploiting honest everyday landlords mercilessly ever since LTB arrived on the scene. Take it from one who was here before LTB came along and handled cases materially different in under 30 days back then.
On August 22nd, the Tenant again wrote to the landlords, “You or Charles are not allowed on the property! You broke into our garage on Saturday afternoon. The landlords fear your actions and continued harassment. Until the landlords have our hearing with LTB you are not permitted on the property for the safety of myself and my wife and daughters”.
This guy has repeatedly bragged about being such a busy big shot professional in the Artificial Intelligence field (“AI” which actually may mean Altered Intelligence when applied to this couple) but the observable and quite phenomenal amount of time he/they invested here, suggests that “big car, big furniture, big job description, big title, big mouth, big, big big”, all simply serves as a foundation to support “a big, big, big fraud” and fraud is supposed to be a crime in Ontario.
LTB has managed to rule on and dispose of this case without even having become familiar with the facts. They actually ended up ruling on the tenant’s T2 basically based on a single piece of evidence in which the tenant alleged the landlord threatening, intimidating, and harassing him leaving the tenant acting like a deer in the headlights. All he could say was “the whole thing” where clearly there was none.
October 1st rolled around with more childish disrespectful conduct but no rent cheque or update with respect to terminating the lease and/or vacating the property.
When we woke up on October 2nd we discovered an email delivered late the previous evening, from the tenant saying: “Your continued attempt to harass me repeatedly have now become detrimental. It has come to my attention that you are sharing my personal information again with third parties without my consent. You have 15 days to contact the LTB and have all information removed from all credit bureaus that they have given this false information to and remove any such references in my credit report.
Folks, I’m confident that by now, you are aware that this again is simply another smoke screen. Reporting a tenant refusing to pay his rent is common practice and common sense. It is standard legal procedure, and about the only thing landlord’s can do under LTB’s seriously flawed interpretation of justice.
And he closes off this email with yet another diatribe threatening litigation (these are all the exclusive territory of our shadow legal adviser coaching him). If you choose not to comply I will be forced to instruct our lawyers to pursue an injunction against you, plus seek damages in excess of $5 Million for harassment and violating our privacy rights under federal law, plus costs. In addition I will place a lien on all your properties within 30 days of this notice as security for judgement. A copy of this notice will also be filed at the LTB, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner”. We of course didn’t comply and as usual, he didn’t follow through on his threat. Wow, Multi Million Dollars in threats plus $50,000 to vacate!
Later that morning the landlords received another email from the tenant saying: ”Due to your continued harassment and interference with our quiet enjoyment of our property we have no choice but to leave. This letter will serve as notice that we will be vacating on October 18th”.
Obviously his (and his legal counsel’s) scheme to get paid-off to vacate and return the property to its owner, had failed and our N13 had thrown a major curve to his shadow legal counsel’s plan (he had no way to end-run LTB published law).
This proved very fortunate to us because had he chosen to just stay in the property which he could have gotten away with thanks to LTB, he could have continued living rent free for over another year while enjoying LTB’s landlord–biased ceiling cap for recoupable damages to landlords of $35,000 (another area that must be fixed immediately). Talk about injustice! Put yourself in the role of landlord here and factor in a monthly mortgage of $5,000 – $6,000 thousand dollars a month, add property taxes that are close to $1,000/month and ongoing repairs and maintenance and you will see the allure of this greenmail scheme by cons.
I would ask you to take a couple minutes and envision yourself in the landlord’s situation here. Assume like the majority of small landlords that you have a mortgage to pay each month (one neighbour on our street told us he has a $7,000/month mortgage – $84,000 per year thus the potential of $128,000 due to the 18 month waiting list at LTB). And now you also have legal costs, filing fees etc. And then you find out that, after waiting 16 months for your Hearing, LTB has not even read your Answer and/or the evidence and therefore knows absolutely none of the meaningful facts about the case.
The logical question is “where is the justice”. If you are like me and can not see any justice in what is taking place with respect to LTB then, get on board with me by simply investing in, reading, and promoting this series of easy to read educational ebooks. They honestly represent the ONLY way this dysfunction will ever be fixed.
Honest everyday Canadians cannot be exposed to being caught up in this type of situation, yet social media and conventional media are full of cases where precisely this is occurring and no-one is doing or has done anything about it! And all the while, LTB is protecting ONLY tenants and showing disrespect and bias toward honest everyday landlords. This simply cannot be allowed to stand.
We also received a call that day from their paralegal proposing that he draft another polite and respectful Settlement Proposal which, we authorized him to do. We had invested almost $4,000 in fees simply trying to keep this matter civil as I was more than confident that I could speak for us myself and I ended up wishing I had.
The Settlement Proposal was a simple one page document with minimal demands on him, other than that he pay his delinquent rent arrears and vacate the premises. Upon having him paying his arrears we would withdraw our applications with LTB that would render him adjudged and the parties could become ships in the night.
An important lesson worth emphasizing here is, if a landlord files an N13 and then cancels it, the tenant no longer is required the give 60 day Notice to vacate. Now, we had paid a paralegal who should have known and informed us of this but he disappointed me and didn’t, which might make you question the logic of even paying for legal counsel. But know that if you don’t retain legal counsel, one small screw up, a check mark missed, will have your case thrown out. LTB is not at all friendly toward landlords and such a position simply is not and can never be considered justice. It’s a literal Catch 22.
Fortunately the tenant in this case had found another unsuspecting landlord to target. He vacated relying on his hard fought lie about being so harassed, bullied, intimidated, threatened and fearful for the safety of his family and that “he was unlawfully forced to vacate” and seeking $35,000 in damages for the false backyard claim plus walking away from $15,000 in rental arrears. Not a bad $50,000 haul if you can get it (probably split 2 way in this case). Both he and his shadow legal counsel apparently were confident that they could prevail at the Hearing.
But in the end, he ended up walking away with absolutely nothing as we had decided to fight the case at a Hearing where we prevailed across the board. The sad and unacceptable thing is that LTB proved itself and remains completely unaware of the multitude of facts other than the one or two pieces of evidence discussed in the zoom meeting Hearing. LTB never tuned into the fraud being perpetrated against the landlords nor the one against LTB itself and both were presented to them in writing.
The LTB had ignored our (defendant’s) submitted request (in their Answer) for compensation for legal costs to offset defending against this fraudulent claim which is said to be an “offence under law” published in LTB’s own printed material.
Had the tenant not found a new landlord to accept him as a tenant (apparently without verifying the tenant’s background and references, under LTB he could have remained living in our property until at least 60 days after the 18 months already delayed twice by LTB Hearing while not paying any rent (so much for the flawed skill-set of his shadow legal counsel) and him still working overtime to harass and threaten the landlords, and run up legal expenses with only the landlord paying any.
And on October 5th, the Tenant’s shadow legal counsel responded to the paralegal’s reasonable Offer to Settle, once again through him, with: “I do not feel that the below is even an offer considering that it is not factually even correct. For starters September rent is already paid. The only months that your clients can attempt to go after would be July, August and 18 days of October” and then going on with his 4 point form letter complaint”. and alleging “I have approximately 30 violations that your clients have performed and there is no question that these are very serious violations and if we continue to go forward with the LTB with the over abundance of evidence the landlords have, it is not a question of if the landlords win, but only how much they will award me. This is all before the landlords even get into the many additional violations I will be awarded which the landlords both know is inevitable.
Here is what I am proposing:
1. I owe no money to your clients and consider everything paid in full up to and until our move out date of Oct. 18th.
2. Your clients will inform Frontlobby and the Landlord Credit Bureau that all monies have been paid in full and there are no defaults or late payments . . . .
3. Your clients will supply me a letter stating all monies have been paid in full and that there is no outstanding debt
4. Your clients will withdraw their 2 remaining claims with LDB. 5. I will remove my $35,000 claim with LTB.
So, what he is proposing is that he be entitled to walk away without honouring his legal obligations and not paying his rent arrears! Does this support the presented theory that all the lies and fabrications were simply elements of a scheme to get paid!
On October 3rd my wife again emailed the tenant: “You have not paid your rent in four months under the false allegations that your landlord was harassing you, threatening you, intimidating you. The LTB should have no difficulty finding the truth in the comprehensive evidence file that the landlords will submit.
Your fabricated issue about the delivery schedule of the back deck is fully disproven. Your fabricated issue of there being a danger regarding the height of the deck has proven false. The landlords would really appreciate you stopping all your bluster and wait for us all to have our day in court. Facts don’t lie . . . only people do.
With all due respect, once again your legal counsel is incorrect. Please stop her sending misinterpreted law forwarded through you to us. Might I remind you that submitting false information on a rental application is considered fraud and submitting false testimony and filings to LTB is an Offence.
As far as any kind of settlement, your arrears will have to be paid in full. You have lived in our home and the rent has to be paid. I am herewith giving you notice to preserve all emails relating to all parties including your shadow legal counsel. Your key deposit will be returned to you providing the keys you return are tested by me to work. Rest assured we intend to settle all matters including your key deposit.
THE GOAL IS TO RAISE $500,000.00 TO FIX THIS delivering a funded
Legal Defence Fund plus establish a true consumer protection agency
A. Having 25,000 Canadian Patriots invest in and read their copy of this ebook: “LTB . . . Unfair, Unjust & Un-Canadian” @ $20 and after reading it simply spread the word; OR
B. Have that same 25,000 Canadian Patriots invest in both “LTB . . . Unfair, Unjust & Un-Canadian” and “Justice Refused” reducing the number of supporters needed to 12,500; OR
C. Have 5,000 Canadian Patriots join our “Founder’s Club” investing $100,receiving both these ebooks and all future ebooks in this series without further investment. Founders will also be identified in each ebook and they are a landlord being exploited FREE advice on dealing with their situation;
