Many Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) staff are members of the BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) or the Professional Employees Association (PEA). The CRT’s unionized staff returned to work on October 27, 2025 after over 4 weeks of strike action.
CRT services by phone and email
We are now able to take phone calls and we appreciate your patience as staff work through a high volume of emails. We will reply as soon as possible.
Services by mail
The CRT sends some documents through Canada Post. Canada Post’s operations continue to be affected by rotating strikes by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).
As postal mail may take longer than usual, we encourage CRT participants to use our online services whenever possible. If you provide the CRT with your email address, we can email documents to you.
Claim applications and responses
During the strikes, participants can still make or respond to a claim. An application or Dispute Response is considered received on the date the CRT received it and payment of any required fee.
We are currently experiencing a high volume of claims. Please allow several months for your application to be processed and a Dispute Notice issued. If you submitted a response to a Dispute Notice, we will contact you as soon as possible about the next steps in the CRT process.
Default decisions
If you made a claim against someone and they didn’t respond by the deadline, the CRT will contact you to ask if you want a default decision. We will also provide instructions to pay any required fee.
The CUPW strike may have limited a respondent’s ability to receive or respond to a Dispute Notice sent by regular mail. The CRT may exercise its discretion to extend timelines for a respondent to submit a completed Dispute Response.
For disputes in which respondents were served with the Dispute Notice through Canada Post, the CRT will not be processing default decisions until the CUPW strike has concluded. During the CUPW strike, we encourage applicants to serve the Dispute Notice themselves, in person or by courier requiring signature.
For more information, see What is a default decision.
Facilitation of disputes
If you had a call or facilitated discussion scheduled that was affected by the strike, your case manager will now reschedule it. If you have settled your claim, please contact your case manager. To learn more, see What is facilitation?
CRT final decisions
CRT tribunal members are independent and are not part of a union. Tribunal members continued writing decisions while unionized staff were on strike. These decisions were emailed or mailed to participants and will be published on the CRT’s website as soon as possible.
We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.