One Year of Mandatory Mediation at the HRTO: What Ontario Employers Have Learned

June 1, 2026 is the one-year anniversary of mandatory mediation at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The same week, the HRTO's consultation on the next round of Rules of Procedure changes closes — submissions are due by June 5, 2026. The proposed changes include a new Practice Direction on Mandatory Mediation that will refine the regime employers have just spent a year operating under.

So this is the right week to look back at what actually changed when the HRTO made mediation mandatory on June 1, 2025 — and what Ontario employers should be doing in the four days they still have to influence the next set of rules.

We covered the May 13 consultation in detail in our prior post. This piece focuses on the operational lessons from the first year of mandatory mediation — what changed in workplace harassment and discrimination files, and what employers should pre-position for the regime that takes effect next.

Key Takeaways

• Mediation is now default, not optional, for every HRTO application — including workplace harassment, sexual harassment, and discrimination files.
• Mediations happen earlier in the file's life than under the prior regime — often before the employer's investigation file has fully closed.
• The June 5, 2026 consultation deadline is the last public-comment window before the next round of changes — including a refined Mandatory Mediation Practice Direction.
• The operational fix for Ontario employers is upstream of the mediation: a tighter investigation file and a defined, pre-authorized settlement range before the mediation notice arrives.

What changed on June 1, 2025

Before the change, HRTO mediation was voluntary. Either party could decline. In practice, voluntary mediation produced a high resolution rate — the HRTO's own statistics indicated that the program was resolving roughly 60% of files at mediation before the regime became mandatory, which was the rationale offered for the change.

On June 1, 2025, every application filed with the HRTO became subject to automatic mediation scheduling after the jurisdictional screening stage. Parties can request exemption in exceptional circumstances using Form 10 — filed at least seven days before the scheduled mediation — but the practice has been to grant exemption sparingly.

That has three operational implications for Ontario employers, which the first year of files has clarified:

1. Mediations land earlier. Under the voluntary regime, mediation tended to follow the document-exchange and statement-of-defence stages. Under the mandatory regime, mediation arrives shortly after jurisdictional screening — often before the respondent employer has fully closed its internal investigation file or completed its own evidence review.

2. The employer team has less time to prepare than it thinks. The mediation notice ordinarily arrives with a date that may be 60 to 90 days out, but that window has to absorb internal alignment, counsel briefing, threshold-assessment review, executive authorization for the settlement envelope, and pre-mediation positioning. Files where any of those work streams have not run start the mediation already behind.

3. The investigation file is on the table from day one. Mediators read the application and the response. If the response references an internal investigation, the investigation file is in the room. If the investigation file has procedural gaps — no threshold assessment, no contemporaneous notes, an investigator who reported to the respondent — those gaps are now part of the mediation calculus and the settlement number.

This is why the mandatory mediation regime has not only pulled forward the settlement conversation. It has pulled forward the investigation conversation. Files that would have had six to nine months to close cleanly under the voluntary regime now have to be defensible in three.

What the first year showed

A few patterns from the first twelve months of operation, drawn from public reporting and from our own work on the ground:

Settlement ranges shifted. Earlier mediation timing means employers settle while the investigation record is still under construction. That uncertainty has tended to push settlement numbers up at the margin, particularly on files where the employer's investigation has not yet generated a defensible findings report by the mediation date.

The "no-investigation" employer position got harder. Under the prior regime, an employer who had not yet investigated could plausibly defer the substantive conversation until later in the file. Under mandatory mediation, the question — what did you do when you became aware? — arrives in the mediation room. Employers without a contemporaneous threshold-assessment record or investigation file are responding from a structurally weaker position. We covered the threshold-assessment standard in detail in our companion piece this week.

Mediators are more willing to test the parties' positions. Mandatory mediation has changed mediator posture — toward more active questioning, more willingness to surface weaknesses on either side, and more pressure to settle the file at the table rather than reserve disputed points for a merits hearing. The HRTO's mediators are doing what their counterparts in other mandatory regimes have done: closing files at the door.

Internal-counsel calendars filled up. For mid-market employers without in-house employment counsel, the practical pressure on the budget shifted from litigation defence to mediation preparation. Most files now have a real settlement conversation at the mediation. That has changed the cost curve for HR functions that previously planned for a one-shot defence and now plan for a structured resolution window.

Why the June 5 consultation deadline matters

The May 13, 2026 HRTO consultation is the next step. The proposed changes include a refined Mandatory Mediation Practice Direction that will codify aspects of the regime that have so far been operating on practice rather than rule. Among the questions in play:

• The threshold for granting exemption from mandatory mediation, and the form Form 10 takes
• The scheduling discretion around the gap between jurisdictional screening and the mediation date
• The treatment of multi-party files, intersectional applications, and applications joined with companion proceedings (OLRB, civil)
• The interaction with the reconsideration regime and with the recently overhauled jurisdictional-review pathway

The consultation closes June 5, 2026. After that, the Tribunal will finalize the changes and the next operating period of mandatory mediation will run under refined rules. Ontario employers and their counsel have four days from this post to file submissions — directly through the HRTO consultation page, or indirectly through industry and professional associations that file collective submissions, such as the Ontario Bar Association.

The substance of those submissions matters. The procedural rules drafted now will govern every Ontario harassment, sexual harassment, and discrimination application filed for the next several years.

What Ontario employers should do this quarter

Two work streams, both upstream of the next mediation notice that arrives in your inbox.

Investigation discipline. The mandatory mediation regime has revealed which investigation files survive the early mediation conversation and which do not. The files that survive have three features: a contemporaneous threshold-assessment record, an independent investigator (internal or external) with no reporting line into the respondent's chain, and a findings report that documents what was investigated, what was concluded, and what corrective action followed. The files that do not survive are the ones we keep rebuilding for employer counsel after the mediation notice has already arrived.

If your last twelve months of harassment files do not have those three features as a matter of routine, the operational fix is not a new policy. The fix is the upstream discipline of what "appropriate in the circumstances" actually requires, built into the way HR triages every concern that reaches the function.

Settlement readiness. Under the voluntary regime, settlement preparation could wait. Under the mandatory regime, it cannot. The right posture is to pre-authorize a defined settlement envelope — monetary and non-monetary — before the mediation notice arrives, with internal alignment between HR, employment counsel, and the executive sponsor on the resolution range. The mediation conversation moves fast. Files where the person at the table can actually settle close at the table. Files where authorization has to be sought between sessions tend to drift toward more expensive outcomes.

For most Ontario employers, the practical fix is a written settlement-authority document that maps the dollar and non-monetary envelope to the file type, the seriousness of the allegation, and the strength of the underlying investigation record. It sits in the same file as the threshold assessment and the investigation report. It moves with the file when counsel changes, when HR turnover happens, and when the executive sponsor rotates.

How 1205 helps

We run external workplace investigations across Ontario in the harassment, sexual harassment, discrimination, and reprisal space, with the procedural discipline that the mandatory mediation regime now requires. Where we are brought in early, the investigation file is built to survive the mediation conversation. Where we are brought in late, we work alongside employer counsel to triage the file, reconstruct the contemporaneous record where reconstruction is possible, and position the corrective action for the mediation.

If you have an HRTO application on a member of your team and the mediation date is sitting on the calendar — or if your HR function has open harassment matters and you are not yet confident the investigation files will survive the next mediation — book a 30-minute call and we will work through what the file needs.

If you are upstream of any of that and your team is reviewing whether your current investigation posture matches the standard the HRTO is now applying at mediation, the investigation assessment is a faster first read than waiting for a notice to arrive.

Learn more about our workplace investigations practice or our HR Services offering for ongoing HR partnerships.

This post is not legal advice. The decisions on whether to participate in mediation, what posture to take, and what settlement terms to accept should run through your employment counsel.