An 80% target is reported for scheduling most hearings within 25 business days and issuing orders within five business days, with exclusions.
Institutional visibility
What does the LTB measure and report about itself?
Annual reports are one way a public institution explains what it does, measures how well it is meeting its mandate and what it considers worth measuring. Across nearly three decades of ORHT and LTB reporting, that picture changes repeatedly.
The more the measures move, the harder it becomes to judge what is genuinely improving or deteriorating over time.
01 / Institutional role
A stable role, changing ways of describing performance
Across legislative, governance and technology changes, the tribunal continues to describe a recognizable public role: resolving disputes, providing information, supporting access to the process and delivering decisions fairly and efficiently.
The machinery used to carry out that role changes substantially. So do the measures used to describe whether the institution is succeeding.
What remains visible long enough to tell whether the institution is getting better at the things it says matter?
02 / Performance
Performance measures
If the definition of success changes, what can still be compared?
The tribunal has used a series of service standards, targets, timing measures and performance indicators. They vary in the activities covered, the application types grouped together, target thresholds, business versus calendar days and whether a measure appears in a given year.
Differentiated standards are introduced for L1/L9 and other application groups; L5 and A4 remain outside the scheduling standards.
The KPI framework uses 50/55 calendar-day scheduling thresholds and adds a 90-day case-lifecycle measure.
KPI coverage expands, but some measures are available for only part of the fiscal year.
What remains unknown: the annual reports do not establish whether stable internal measures provide stronger longitudinal continuity than the public record.
03 / Mediation
Mediation
What happens when an activity stays present but becomes harder to observe?
Mediation is highly visible in the early tribunal record. Over time, denominators change, recurring outcome measures disappear, and later reports describe targeted case-management conferences, dispute-resolution officers, online dispute resolution and portal-based mediation requests.
The activity remains visible in the institution. Its outcomes become harder to follow consistently across the full reporting period. That distinction matters: a reporting gap tells us what the public record can show, not whether mediation continued, expanded, contracted or changed form.
04 / Service and access
Service and access
What can be known about tribunal accessibility?
Earlier reports describe regional offices, off-site hearings, ServiceOntario intake, call-centre information, bilingual services and physical filing channels. Later reporting emphasizes provincial, virtual and digital service delivery. Some access-related dimensions still later become visible through reporting of hearing mode, language, accommodations, technical support and assisted filing.
These measures describe different aspects of access at different times, however showing that a channel exists is not the same as knowing whether people can access, navigate and participate in the process successfully.
05 / Metrics timeline
The metrics-presence timeline remains under review
Why it matters
Organisations are aware of what they measure
The public is aware of what is published
Organizations need room to change measures when priorities, services and operating conditions change. At the same time, longitudinal accountability depends on retaining enough continuity to ask whether the institution is improving at fulfilling its mandate.
Changes and gaps in public reporting define what outside observers can — and cannot — assess consistently. They also identify where further evidence and additional questions are needed.