E-file Instructions for registered approval authorities

When an appellant submits an appeal to your approval authority, the submitted appeal will appear in the e-file Approval Authority Dashboard under the heading "Appeals Pending Review”. See screenshot below:

Select the appeal to verify the information submitted by clicking on the Appeal ID, as marked on the screenshot below.

A new screen will appear entitled “Approval Authority Review of Appeal Submission”. To display the details of the submitted appeal, click Show More Details, as indicated in the screenshot below. This will expand the screen to show all the information that the appellant has submitted.

Change the status of the appeal to indicate you have finished your review by selecting “Reviewed”, “Reviewed – Issues” or “Validity Issue/Withdrawn” from the drop-down menu under Review Status. Note: if you select “Validity Issue/Withdrawn”, the appeal will be fast-tracked to the Tribunal, and you don’t need to create a full case package or municipal record. See the section below, Handling ineligible or withdrawn appeals for more information. Otherwise, if you’re not yet finished reviewing or are only conducting the initial review, you can select “Review in Progress.” Next click Save Review at the bottom of the screen. See screenshot below.  

You will now be taken back to the “Appeals Pending Review” screen. If you have additional appeals to review, you can do so now.  

Please note that after you’ve saved a review of an appeal, it will move to the “Appeals Reviewed” page in the Approval Authority Dashboard tab. 

The next step is to create a case and add any required information about the case before forwarding to the OLT. A case package may contain one appeal or multiple related appeals depending how many appeals the approval authority receives on a matter.

Under the Approval Authority Dashboard, select “Appeals Reviewed” from the drop-down menu to see a list of all appeals that have been reviewed and saved by you or any other contacts within your approval authority from Step 1. See screenshot below.

On the Appeals Reviewed page, proceed as follows:

Follow the on-screen directions given in the portal to add information about the case. In creating a case package, e-file allows you to:

• Add the contact(s) from your office for the case.
• Add representative(s) for your approval authority, if applicable.
• Upload documents related to the case such as relevant checklist items and a cover letter.
• Provide specific information about the case (e.g., number of residential units proposed, whether the approval authority intends to appear before the Tribunal, the number and types of witnesses planned, whether appellants made their opinions on the matter known to council, etc.).

E-file will save all the information you’ve entered as you progress through the steps. If you need to stop and come back later, your saved draft will be available under “In Progress Cases” in the Approval Authority Cases tab.

If you receive an additional appeal (either on paper, through email or via e-file) after you’ve completed this step, you can still add the new appeal to your case. See Grouping Appeals into a Case for more information. 

Once you have entered the required data and uploaded all checklist items, you will review the Summary, complete the declaration statement and select Submit. You will then receive an email confirming that you have successfully forwarded the case package to OLT. This email will be copied to all Level-1 users at your municipality to provide confirmation of successful filing of the case package.

Important: Do not submit the case package to OLT until the appeal deadline has expired in case more related appeals are filed that you need to add to the case package. Refer to the applicable legislation to determine the specific timeframe you have after the appeal deadline to submit the case to OLT. For example, some legislation may allow up to 15-20 days.

If you have a related case (for example, a Zoning By-law related to an Official Plan), you can copy information from the first case to avoid re-entering the same details and documents manually. This also creates an automatic relationship between the two cases. All data that you copy into the new case should be reviewed for accuracy and can be edited, if needed, to make it specific to the related case.

How to Copy and Create a Related Case:

1. After submitting your first case, there are two places where you can find the option to Copy/Create Related Case:

a. On the Submission Successful screen immediately after you submit the case (see screenshot below).

b. In the Approval Authority Cases tab, under the Submitted Cases list. See screenshot below.

Find your case in the list, scroll to the right, and under the Action column, select Copy/Create Related Case. See screenshot below.

2. You will be guided through the creation of the new case beginning with identifying the Case Type. Most fields will be pre-filled based on the first case.

3. If applicable, on the Appeals page, add any additional e-filed appeals to the case package.

4. Review the copied information on each screen and update, if needed, to make sure it’s accurate for the new case.

5. When you reach the Related Case screen, the system will show the link between the two cases.

6. Continue to review the Summary, complete the Declaration at the end of the process, and submit to OLT. Note: the link between the cases will be reflected in OLT’s internal case management

To assist the processing of your appeal, please name your saved document files using a descriptive naming convention, such as:

I. the appellant's last name or corporation/organization name
II. the document type
III. the date of submission (month/day/year)

For example: “SmithAffidavit12-05-23”.

Important: Do not use these special characters in naming your documents: \+ / : * ? . " " < >.  You may upload Microsoft products (e.g., Word, Excel), PDFs, MP4s, zip files, JPEGs or other image files. Msg format is not supported. Please save any unsupported file types as PDFs before uploading to the e-file portal.

There are two ways you can do this:

If the appellant has paid by cheque, you can mail or courier the appellant’s cheque to the OLT at 655 Bay Street, Suite 1500, Toronto, ON, M5G 1E5. Please include a brief note that identifies the e-file case number and appellant’s name. This will allow OLT staff to match the cheque to the correct appeal.