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The numbers · what people actually need to know · reviewed August 2026

HRTO success rate, timelines and damages: the numbers

How often do HRTO complaints succeed? How long do they take? Does representation matter? What do police discrimination cases actually produce? Seven charts, each answering a question people ask before they file — and each is drawn from decisions read in full or from the Tribunal's own province-wide figures. Units are named on every chart, because the unit is where most published claims about this system go wrong.

01 · the one number

Almost nothing gets a hearing

1,997 final decisions 1,934 dismissed with no hearing — 96.8% 63 decisions followed a hearing — 3.2%

Of 1,997 final decisions the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario issued in the first nine months of 2025, 1,934 were dismissals without a hearing. Roughly a third of those were for supposed lack of jurisdiction; most of the rest were abandonments. Eighty-four percent of claimants were self-represented.

Unit: final decisions, province-wide, all respondents. Source: Tribunal Watch Ontario analysis of HRTO figures. Detail.

What to take from it: your case is far more likely to end at a piece of paper than at a hearing. Everything on the journey guides is written for that reality — the gates, not the merits, are where cases are won and lost.
02 · the two clocks

Answers got slower. Endings got faster.

3.9 yrs
median from filing to a decision on the merits — and rising
1.1 yrs
median life of a matter filed since 2020 — dead at a paper gate

These two numbers describe the same system. Matters that survive take longer every year. Matters that die, die faster — because they now end at screening and abandonment rather than at hearings. Delay did not slow everything down equally. It moved the endings earlier and the answers later.

Unit: matters, Durham corpus (60 decisions read in full, 2009–2026). Thunder Bay comparators: 4.1 years to a paper gate (Hanchuck); 5.5 years to dismissal (DeBungie).

03 · representation

The clearest predictor in the record

Survived jurisdictional screening — represented
8 of 9 matters
89%
Survived jurisdictional screening — unrepresented
11 of 28 matters
39%
Survived every procedural gate — represented
8 of 9 matters
89%
Survived every procedural gate — unrepresented
5 of 28 matters
18%
Ended as abandoned — represented
0 of 9 matters
0%
Ended as abandoned — unrepresented
13 of 28 matters
46%

Two caveats travel with these numbers and we publish them every time: counsel select cases they judge viable, so representation partly marks case strength; and nine represented matters is a small sample. The direction holds at every gate. Province-wide, roughly 84% of claimants are self-represented.

Unit: matters, Durham corpus. Free representation: Human Rights Legal Support Centre, 1-866-625-5179.

What to take from it: ask for help before a deadline is missed, not after. The gap is largest at exactly the stages that involve paperwork rather than facts.
04 · who is actually complaining

At one service, the majority of complaints came from inside

Thunder Bay — internal (members + board chair)
31 of 50 applications
62%
Thunder Bay — external (the public)
17 of 50 applications
34%
Durham — internal (employment)
5 of 37 matters
14%
Durham — external (services to the public)
22 of 37 matters
59%

Two services, seventeen years each, opposite shapes. Durham's record is civilians complaining about policing. Thunder Bay's is the institution's own people — eleven serving or former members plus the chair of its own oversight board. Any comparison between police services that does not hold this split constant is measuring two different things.

Units differ by necessity: Durham counts matters (one file = one matter); Thunder Bay counts applications (consolidated decisions break that convention). Side by side.

05 · what people plead

Civilians allege race. Employees allege disability and reprisal.

Civilians — race, colour, ancestry or ethnic origin
9 of 19 civilian applications
47%
Employees — race cluster
5 of 26 employee applications
19%
Employees — disability
25 of 26 employee applications
96%
Employees — reprisal
19 of 26 employee applications
73%

Two different injuries from one institution. The public alleges race; the institution's own staff allege disability and reprisal. Merging them produces a number that describes neither. Reprisal appears in 73% of employee applications at Thunder Bay and ties for the top ground at Durham. It is a free-standing wrong: it survives even if the underlying discrimination claim fails, because the harm is the punishment, not the original conduct. It is also the most under-used provision in the Code.

Unit: applications, Thunder Bay corpus, text-derived. How to plead it.

06 · the doors

Human rights is one of five routes — and the narrowest at appeal

Criminal appeals raising racial profiling
the large majority of ONCA profiling law
many
Civil actions against Ontario police boards
Toronto, Ottawa, London, Waterloo, Niagara, Halton, Dryden, Woodstock, Durham
~40
Human Rights Code cases reaching the Court of Appeal
Toronto (Phipps, 2012) · Durham (Briggs, 2022)
2

Ontario's racial-profiling doctrine is built almost entirely by accused people seeking to exclude evidence. Police boards appear in the civil list constantly. In fourteen years, exactly two Ontario police human-rights cases reached the Court of Appeal.

Retrieved from the A2AJ open Canadian legal corpus (ONCA dataset, 24,036 decisions). The full forum analysis.

What to take from it: the Code is the only forum where discrimination is the wrong itself and where losing costs you nothing — and it is the least likely to produce a hearing. The door cheapest to enter is the one least likely to open.
07 · the ending

What seventeen years produced at two police services

117
decisions read in full across both services
6
merits hearings, Durham, in seventeen years
0
merits hearings, Thunder Bay, ever
1
remedy between them — $10,000, kept only after four courts

The one successful claim was a racial-profiling finding. The Tribunal cancelled it. The Divisional Court restored it. The Court of Appeal upheld the restoration. The Supreme Court refused leave, with costs. Eight years of litigation to keep $10,000.

Durham 60 decisions / 40 matters, 2009–2026; Thunder Bay 57 decisions / 50 applications, 2009–2026. Both read in full and joined to court records.

Using these

Every chart on this page may be reproduced with attribution to onionskin.ca. If you are a journalist, clinic or researcher and want the underlying data, it is open — ask. If you think a number here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed in place and dated.

Published in good faith from public records as fair comment on matters of public interest. Information, not legal advice.