Shannon Kiekens
“Exclusively for landlords”
Five things to know
For 20 years, Kiekens worked as a paralegal for Cohen Highley, a prominent law firm that specialized in landlord-only representation.
Kiekens was appointed as an adjudicator on July 30, 2020 by the Ford administration to prepare for the eviction “blitz.” In her bio for the LTB, she left out the fact that she was a landlord-only paralegal for 20 years.
Despite acknowledging a conflict of interest while adjudicating eviction applications from Cohen Highley, her employer of 20 years, Kiekens still issued interim orders.
In response to a statement from a real estate agent that landlords should “all be human … act reasonable and care about each other,” Kiekens responded: “At the end of the day, everybody’s running a business.”
In June 2020, a month before she started her job at the LTB, but likely after she had applied and interviewed, she was writing articles for landlord-side firm Cohen Highley on the fastest way for landlords to get money from struggling tenants.
Shannon Kiekens was appointed to the LTB on July 30, 2020 during the first wave of COVID-19, one day before the eviction moratorium in Ontario was lifted. She was hired in preparation for the LTB’s online COVID-19 eviction “blitz.”
Ad for law firm Cohen Highley’s “exclusively for landlords” services, featuring Shannon Kiekens as one of the firm’s five paralegals.
LTB adjudicator Shannon Kiekens
Kiekens wrote in her bio for the LTB’s website that she’s a “licensed Paralegal with the Law Society of Ontario.” This is like her saying, “I’m a medical doctor with a medical-school degree.” The Law Society of Ontario states, “You must be licensed by the Law Society of Ontario to work as a paralegal in Ontario.” Maybe she’s using this redundant description to try to hide the fact that she worked for one of the most vocal landlord-side law firms, Cohen Highley, since 2000 (her LSO profile says she’s still employed by Cohen Highley). Cohen Highley is not a huge firm. It only has five lawyers who specialize in Residential Tenancies, and Kiekens was part of that family. Over her 20 years at Cohen Highley, she presented at conferences with her colleagues, lawyers Kristen Ley and Joe Hoffer. Now, as an LTB adjudicator, Ley is coming to Kiekens with eviction applications.
After spending the spring filing eviction applications as a paralegal at Cohen Highley, Keikens was appointed as an adjudicator at the LTB to preside over eviction hearings.
In fact, Kiekens has had to excuse herself from multiple eviction hearings since she started hammering through “L1 express blocks.” On Nov. 23, 2020 while an articling student from Cohen Highley was representing a landlord, Kiekens stated there was a conflict because she was the one who filed the application.
Two days later, adjudicator Shannon Kiekens was presiding over a virtual hearing between Pinedale Properties and a member of the East York 50, a largely immigrant, working-class tenants’ union. The lawyer for the landlord, Pinedale Properties, was Kristin Ley, who works at Cohen Highley. Kiekens admitted to having a conflict-of-interest as she herself was the paralegal that filed for the eviction application on the landlord’s behalf months earlier, when she was working at Cohen Highley. Despite acknowledging the conflict-of-interest, she issued an interim order that weakened the legal position of a tenant facing eviction after losing his job during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an interview with a real estate organization on March 31, 2020, four months before Kiekens became an adjudicator, the host brought up tenant rent arrears due to the pandemic and said, “Landlord or tenant, let’s all be human. We need to act reasonable and care about each other.” Kieken’s response revealed how she really feels about the dignity and humanity of tenants. She said, “At the end of the day, everybody’s running a business.”
In June 2020, Keikens wrote articles at Cohen Highley to advise landlords on the quickest methods for how to collect rent arrears during the eviction moratorium. Keikens’ writes: “Landlords have been hard hit by the Province’s moratorium on evictions and are struggling to find ways to mitigate the losses resulting from that moratorium.” She recommended pursuing for arrears only, rather than arrears and an eviction, citing her own cases heard during the eviction moratorium that set out “important principles applied by the LTB when it comes to tenants using COVID-19 as an excuse for breaking a lease or refusing to pay rent.”
“Despite raising the possible conflict, Kiekens asked the lawyers whether they wanted her to issue an interim order, which is a temporary order usually put in place until a case can be fully heard.”