What happens if the HRTO defers my application because of a police complaint?
Deferral means your application is paused, not decided, while another process — usually a police-complaint or criminal proceeding — runs its course. You keep your place in line, but the pause can last years, and the responsibility to ask the Tribunal to reactivate it is yours. Diarise it. A reactivation request made late is a common way a good case ends without ever being heard.
Deferral pauses your HRTO application while another proceeding — usually a police complaint to LECA, a criminal matter, or a grievance — runs its course. Your file stays open but nothing happens in it. When the other process ends, you must ask the Tribunal to reactivate. That request has its own deadline, and missing it is one of the quietest ways a case dies.
Journey · Rule 14 · Code s.34 and s.45.1
Information from the public record, not legal advice. This page describes a genuine trap in the current law. If it applies to you, get advice before deciding anything.
What this stage is
If the same events are before another body — a police complaint at LECA, a grievance, a court case — the Tribunal can pause ("defer") your human rights application until the other process ends. Deferral is discretionary. You can ask for it; a respondent can ask for it; the Tribunal decides.
The trap, in three walls
Wall one. Something happens with police. The visible, official complaint route is LECA (formerly the OIPRD). Many people file there first and wait. LECA processes routinely take longer than a year.
Wall two. They then file at the HRTO and are told they're late. The Tribunal's caselaw holds that waiting for a police complaint to finish is not good-faith delay under s.34(2) — you were expected to file at the HRTO within the year and ask for a deferral while LECA ran. Matters in the record died exactly this way, including applications filed months after a LECA process concluded.
Wall three. How reliably that pause works cannot be measured from the public record. All three published deferral rulings in our corpus — 2016, 2019, 2020 — refused to pause for police proceedings; deferral decisions are not always published, so the full grant-and-refusal picture is invisible. The Supreme Court has separately held that a police complaint is not a substitute for a human rights claim: it decides discipline, not discrimination, and awards you nothing.
So the official answer to "why didn't you file within the year?" is "you should have filed and asked to pause" — and the record shows the pause is often refused. It is the basis of a law-reform proposal we are pursuing: pause the s.34 clock while a police complaint about the same events is pending, the way Ontario's general Limitations Act already pauses limitation periods during third-party resolution processes.
What this means in practice today
File at the HRTO within the year, regardless of any other process. Run both. Do not let a LECA complaint, an internal complaint, or settlement talks consume your year. Filing costs nothing and preserves everything; waiting preserves nothing.
If your matter is deferred, calendar the end of it. Rule 14.4 gives you 60 days to ask to reactivate after the other proceeding concludes. In the record, an application that asked on day 71 was dismissed. The 60 days is enforced.
If a civil lawsuit is involved, get advice before filing it. Under s.34(11), a court claim seeking human-rights remedies for the same facts can bar the HRTO application entirely. This wall, unlike deferral, has no discretion in it.
What we can't tell you
How often deferral requests are made and granted across all matters — deferral decisions are only published sometimes. It is one of the disposition categories in the data request we are preparing. FOI Tracker.
Next: Mediation
Published in good faith from public records as fair comment on matters of public interest. Believed accurate at the review date; errors will be corrected on notice. Information, not legal advice; no lawyer-client relationship is created.
Common questions
How long does deferral last?
As long as the other proceeding does — often years. The Tribunal does not monitor it for you.
Do I have to do anything while deferred?
Yes, one thing: know when the other proceeding ends, and file to reactivate promptly. Diarize it twice.
Can I refuse deferral?
You can oppose the request in writing. In our corpus, every time deferral was litigated the Tribunal refused to pause — but those were respondent requests, and whether an applicant's own protective request fares differently is untested in this record.
What if I reactivate late?
The Tribunal may treat the application as abandoned or untimely. Late reactivation is a recognised category of dismissal in the published record.
How long does deferral last?
Until the other proceeding concludes. In practice this has meant multi-year pauses. Nothing restarts automatically.
Whose job is it to restart the case?
Yours. Put the reactivation request in writing to the Tribunal, copied to the other side, as soon as the other process ends.
Can I refuse to be deferred?
You can make submissions opposing deferral. Whether they succeed depends on how closely the other process overlaps with your Code claim.
What if the other process already dealt with it?
Then the Tribunal may dismiss under s. 45.1 as appropriately dealt with elsewhere. In the Thunder Bay record, an officer's application was dismissed on exactly this basis after WSIB addressed the substance.