How to Complain About or Sue Police, Government or a Company in Ontario

Where should I complain about police, a government body or a company?

Most people complain first, and that is usually right — complaints are free, carry no costs risk, and create a record. But complaint bodies cannot award you money, and some filings close other doors. The comparison below shows all eleven routes by what each can actually order.

Which routes are open depends on who you are complaining about:

Police or corrections — oversight complaint, human rights application, civil claim in tort, Charter damages, and in some circumstances a criminal process.
A government body or public agency — human rights application, judicial review, an ombudsman or commissioner, Charter damages, civil claim.
A company, landlord or private employer — human rights application, civil claim, Employment Standards, a professional regulator. Charter claims are not available: they run only against the state.
A unionised workplace — the grievance usually goes first, and the Tribunal often defers to it.

The trade-off that usually decides it. A human rights application is free and carries no costs risk if you lose. A civil claim can order far more — including punitive damages the Tribunal has no power to award — but costs follow the event in both directions.

Every route, and what each can actually order

The three doors above are the ones that reach the Court of Appeal. In practice a person has more than three options, and they differ less in subject-matter than in what they are able to order at the end. This is the full comparison.

Available Limited or conditional Not available

Route	Money for dignity	Lost wages	Punitive damages	Policy or training	Discipline of a person	Free to use	Costs risk against you
Human Rights TribunalOntario Human Rights Code
Civil — Code damagess. 46.1, needs another cause of action
Civil — Charter damagesGovernment and state actors only
Civil — tortsBattery, false imprisonment, negligence
Class proceedingAggregates many people's claims
Police oversight complaintProvincial complaints body
Criminal processPolice and Crown control it
Union grievanceUnionised workplaces
Employment StandardsMinistry of Labour
Workplace injury (WSIB)Removes the right to sue, usually
Professional regulatorCollege or licensing body

The two columns nobody weighs until it is too late are the last two. The Tribunal is free and carries no costs risk, which is precisely why it absorbs almost every claim — including many that would be worth more elsewhere. Reported Section 45.2 of the Code contains no punitive damages power; the Tribunal compensates, it does not punish.

The civil door: what Asghar establishes

In Asghar v. Toronto Police Services Board, 2019 ONCA 479, the police respondents argued that claims for "racial profiling", "improper purpose" and "malicious falsehood" are not recognised causes of action. That is the structural difficulty with the civil door: profiling is not itself a tort. It has to be pleaded through recognised causes — negligent investigation, false imprisonment, battery, misfeasance in public office, Charter damages — with race as the factual explanation for why the conduct occurred.

The contrast with the Code is exact. Under the Human Rights Code, discrimination is the wrong itself. In civil court, discrimination is the motive behind some other wrong you must independently establish. That single difference explains much of the forum-selection behaviour visible in the record.

Choosing a door — the honest comparison

	Human rights (HRTO)	Civil action	Criminal (as accused)
Is discrimination the wrong?	Yes — directly actionable	No — must attach to a recognised tort (Asghar)	No — it is a route to exclusion
Filing cost	None	Substantial	N/A
Costs if you lose	None	Adverse costs	N/A
Deadline	One year	Two years (Limitations Act)	N/A
Discovery	Limited disclosure	Full documentary and oral discovery	Crown disclosure
Aggregation	None	Class proceedings available	None
Odds of a hearing	≈3% of final decisions follow one	Most actions settle; trials are rare but reachable	Trial is the default
Remedy	Injury to dignity; lost wages; policy orders	Damages, including aggravated and punitive	Exclusion, stay, acquittal
Public record produced	Decision — if it survives to one	Judgment — if it does not settle	Reasons for judgment

The pattern behind the table. The Code is the only forum where discrimination is the wrong itself and where losing costs you nothing — which is why unrepresented people overwhelmingly choose it. It is also the forum with the lowest probability of reaching a hearing. The door that is cheapest to enter is the one least likely to open. That is not a coincidence; it is what happens when a no-cost forum absorbs the demand that priced forums exclude.

What the same conduct produced in two forums

The table above compares what each door can produce. This compares what two of them did produce, on facts that are unusually comparable — and it shows why the comparison has to be read carefully rather than as a single multiplier.

Held A holding of a court, stated as the court stated it.

Reported A fact recorded in a reported judgment or an organisation's own published material.

Our reading OnionSkin's inference. Argued, not authoritative.

Reported Two Black men were stopped by Ontario police services in 2011. Both were detained and handcuffed. In each case an adjudicator found racial profiling, and in each the finding rested on circumstantial evidence. One proceeded under the Code; one sued.

Briggs · Human Rights Tribunal Followed, pulled over, questioned, handcuffed, detained · 2015 HRTO 1712 $10,000

injury to dignity

Elmardy · Divisional Court Stopped, punched twice, handcuffed, left on an icy deck · 2017 ONSC 2074 $80,000

$50,000 Charter

$25,000 punitive

Charter damages Punitive Battery $5,000

Read the gap correctly. Reported $30,000 of the Elmardy award sits in heads the Tribunal has no power to order — $25,000 punitive and $5,000 in tort. The closest comparable figures are $50,000 in Charter damages against $10,000 in Code damages. Reported The conduct also differed: on the facts recorded in Elmardy the applicant was assaulted; the facts in the Briggs merits decision do not include an assault. Our reading Some of the remainder is severity, and should be. What is left points at remedial architecture — Charter damages are assessed partly for deterrence and vindication, while the Tribunal's power under s. 45.2 is compensatory only.

Reported The largest damage award in Ontario for a victim of racial profiling, per the Ontario Human Rights Commission. We have not surveyed all awards ourselves.

And the Charter route was closed to most people in Briggs' position. Charter claims lie against state actors. A person treated the same way by a landlord, a shop or a private employer cannot bring the Elmardy claim at all. For most claimants the Code is not the cheapest of several doors — it is the only one open.

What eleven and a half years looks like

Reported The Briggs award is the least interesting fact about the case. The Court of Appeal record shows: incident May 2011; application April 2012; four hearing days concluding June 2014; decision reserved eighteen months; merits decision December 2015. The same Vice-Chair then ruled in November 2017 that a settlement of a different application had covered this one, and in March 2019 cancelled her own merits decision as an abuse of process. The Divisional Court held both rulings unreasonable and decided the question itself rather than remitting it, citing delay. The Court of Appeal dismissed the board's appeal in November 2022.

The condition attached to the settlement money. Reported The Court of Appeal reproduced paragraph 2 of the Minutes of Settlement. A further payment was due one year and two weeks later, and only if in that year the applicant had filed no complaint or commenced no litigation against the service, its board, its officers or employees; had posted no videos or negative commentary on the internet regarding them; and signed a full and final release. The amount is redacted in the reported judgment; the conditions are not.

Does using one door close another?

This is the question people get wrong most expensively, and the answer differs by pairing.

A civil claim can remove the Tribunal's jurisdiction — automatically

Reported Section 34(11) provides that a person may not make an application where a civil proceeding has been commenced seeking an order under s. 46.1 for the same alleged infringement and that proceeding has not been finally determined or withdrawn. The Tribunal has applied it as a mandatory bar: where the facts and issues in the two proceedings are the same, the application must be dismissed — and it has been engaged even where the civil claim did not expressly seek Code remedies or mention discrimination. The determinative question is whether the facts and issues are the same, not whether the civil action is likely to succeed. Where the claims are genuinely different — for example reprisal that occurred after the civil action was filed — it does not apply.

Another proceeding can lead to dismissal — with discretion

Reported Section 45.1 permits the Tribunal to dismiss where another proceeding has appropriately dealt with the substance. Our reading The reported decisions turn substantially on whether the other decision-maker actually engaged the human rights question.

A police complaint does not automatically bar a civil claim

Reported In Penner v. Niagara (Regional Police Services Board), 2013 SCC 19, the applicant was arrested in a courtroom in January 2003, filed both a complaint under the Police Services Act and a civil action, and the complaint was dismissed after a disciplinary hearing. The defendants then moved to strike much of the civil claim as already decided — and succeeded before the motion judge and again at the Court of Appeal.

Held A majority of the Supreme Court allowed the appeal. The Court declined to create a rule of public policy excluding police disciplinary hearings from issue estoppel, but held that on these facts applying it was unfair. The majority relied on the absence of any remedy or costs for the complainant in the disciplinary process, the different standards of proof and purposes of the two proceedings, statutory provisions contemplating parallel proceedings, and the fact that applying estoppel allowed the Chief of Police's designate to exonerate the Chief in the civil claim — described as a serious affront to basic principles of fairness. The Court also noted the risk that complainants would stop coming forward in order to protect their civil actions.

Three qualifications on Penner. Held It is a discretionary, case-by-case assessment, not a general rule — the Court expressly declined to create one, and three judges dissented. Held It does not operate symmetrically: a failure to prove misconduct on clear and convincing evidence does not mean the same allegations could not be established on a balance of probabilities, while a finding of misconduct might properly preclude relitigation of liability in a civil action. Reported Arrest January 2003; Supreme Court judgment April 2013. That decade established the availability of the civil claim, not its merits.

Other tribunals can apply the Code

Held In Tranchemontagne v. Ontario (Director, Disability Support Program), 2006 SCC 14, the Court held that the Social Benefits Tribunal had jurisdiction to consider the Human Rights Code in deciding matters before it. Our reading Where you are already before another tribunal, the Code may be available there without a separate application — a point rarely raised with self-represented parties.

Route finder

Three questions. The result is a shortlist to take to a person, not an answer — it cannot see your facts, your dates, or anything already filed in your matter.

Question 1

What kind of situation is it?Choose the closest

Question 2

Who is responsible?The organisation or person

Question 3

What do you want to happen?Choose as many as apply

Answer above and a shortlist appears here.

What the appellate record shows

Door	What appears at the Court of Appeal	What a win produces
Criminal Charter ss. 8, 9, 24(2)	The large majority. R. v. Morris, 2021 ONCA 680 (82 citing cases); R. v. Dudhi, 2019 ONCA 665; R. v. Sitladeen, 2021 ONCA 303; R. v. Le; R. v. Pike, 2024 ONCA 608; R. v. Brown (the seminal decision)	Evidence excluded, charges stayed or acquittal. No money, no order against the service, no finding it must publish.
Civil tort, Charter damages	A steady docket of police-board actions province-wide — Toronto, Ottawa, London, Waterloo, Niagara, Halton, Woodstock, Dryden, Durham	Damages; discovery; class aggregation. Costs risk both ways.
Human rights Ontario Human Rights Code	Two. Shaw v. Phipps, 2012 ONCA 155 (Toronto) and Briggs v. Durham (Police Services Board), 2022 ONCA 823	Injury-to-dignity damages; non-monetary orders. No costs risk.

Two Code cases from two services in fourteen years. Not Ottawa, not Hamilton, not Windsor, not Peel, not York, not Waterloo, not London — none of them has an HRTO police matter that reached the Court of Appeal. Meanwhile the same police boards appear repeatedly in the civil list. The human-rights door is not merely narrow at the tribunal. It barely reaches the appellate courts at all.

What this suggests, without advising anyone

If you are charged, profiling is an argument in your defence, and the law supporting it is strong and appellate-endorsed.
If you were stopped and released, the criminal door does not exist for you; the Code and civil court are the options, and only the Code treats what happened to you as the wrong itself.
If the harm includes lost employment or reprisal for complaining, the Code has provisions with no civil equivalent — reprisal in particular.
If the practice affected many people the same way, the aggregation tools are in civil court, not at the Tribunal.
Whatever the door: get the records first. Every one of these forums runs on the institution's own documents. How.

Sources retrieved from the A2AJ open Canadian legal corpus (ONCA, SCC, CHRT, FC, FCA datasets). Research analysis, not legal advice; forum choice has consequences that depend entirely on facts we do not know.

Getting advice on the choice. Free legal clinics by community — several will talk through forum selection specifically, and several apply no income test.

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