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If the government follows through with increasing wage loss benefits from 85% to 90% of net lost wages for workers injured on the job who can’t return to work, it would simply be restoring these benefits to their previous levels.

As IWC caseworkers Chris Grawey and Tebasum Durrani explain in a Toronto Star op-ed, “Ontario must increase pay to injured workers”, the cut to loss of earning benefits in 1997 was justified by the government on the grounds that the workers’ compensation system was facing a financial crisis. Yet, at the same time employer-paid premiums, which finance the WSIB, were slashed and continue to be reduced and rebates given while workers have seen little additional financial support from the provincial government or the WSIB….. [read full article]

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The Clinic’s position has long been that the experience rating system is ineffective in improving health and safety, and encourages claims suppression. Until eliminated, submission recommends that temporary employment agencies move to their new applicable premium rate established by the WSIB.

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In an online Zoom/Telephone meeting next Wednesday, April 27th at 12:30pm will discuss the WSIB response to inflation that is going through the roof – a small cost of living adjustment that that is well-below the higher costs found in injured workers’ grocery bills. We will talk about how you can help push back against this injustice, and discuss a number of other important in-person and online events that are coming up in the next few months.

“Injured workers are losing out on vital compensation because the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board is failing to apply cost-of-living benefit increases as required by law, critics say…” While Statistics Canada reports costs of living up 4.7% between October 2020 and October 2021, the Board is averaging these costs out, giving injured workers only 2.7%.

As IWC’s Chris Grawey points out, this will only exacerbate and perpetuate the poverty in which many accident victims are living…“It’s time to pay the injured workers what they’re entitled to by law.”

Read full article: Mojtehedzadeh, Sara. 2022 Apr. 14. “It’s just another blow’: why injured workers say they’re losing out as inflation hits.” Toronto Star

In a Toronto Star op-ed IWC caseworkers call on whichever government takes power after the election to change the WSIB’s arbitrary and discriminatory age 65 cut-off for wage-loss benefits.

Even though the province abolished mandatory retirement in 2006, workers’ compensation legislation was exempted. However more Canadians are staying in the workforce past the age of 65, in part because they can’t afford to retire. The WSIB’s own data bears out this trend. From 2002 to 2020, the number of workers’ compensation claims for workers age 65 or older has increased by more than 500 per cent…

Read full article: by Tebasum Durrani and Chris Grawey

Submission urges that the WSIB respect Meredith’s concept that occupational disease should be put on “the same footing” as workplace accidents, and that the WSIB Policy framework should adopt the same evidentiary standard of “Significant contributing factor” in order to bring some reparation and justice to victims of occupational disease in Ontario… This means that if a worker’s employment or activities related to their employment are shown to be a significant contributing factor in their injury or disease, then the worker will get WSIB benefits. This doesn’t mean that a workplace accident or injury has to be the only cause of a worker’s condition or disease…..

Our organization has been supportive of the newly formed Occupational Disease Reform Alliance (ODRA) since its inception. We fully endorse their submission to this consultation. The ODRA includes victims and survivors of occupational disease as well as deeply knowledgeable experts in the compensation of occupational disease. The group believes that key to addressing the issue of occupational disease in Ontario is to have legislation to meet its four demands: 1) compensate occupational disease claims when workplace patterns exceed levels in the surrounding community; 2) expand the list of compensable diseases presumed to be work-related; 3) use the proper legal standard, not scientific certainty; 4) accept that multiple exposures combine to cause disease…

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