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Deeming

Injured workers need permanent compensation for permanent injury. The wage loss system has been distorted and is not being calculated as Hon. Gergory Sorbara intended it when he introduced the legislation in 1989. Low wage earners end up with little or no compensation and no retraining even if they can actually never return to employment : a "phantom wage for a phantom job".

Injured workers should at least be compensated for their actual loss of wages and they should be entitled to at least one year of job search assistance.

And if there is a disability for life, there should be a pension for life.

There should be no reduction in benefits if an injured worker gets Canada Pension Disability benefits. The injured worker has paid for those benefits. Ontario should negotiate with the federal governmnet to maintain contributions to the CPP for those injured workers who can neither work nor receive the Canada Pension Disability benefit.  (source: Toronto Injured Workers Groups)

The Board, in its September 2005 response to the Minister, committed to a policy review that would give injured workers "greater flexibility and fairness"; however the proposed policies under the new Bill 187 leave injured workers worse off than before... Read more....
  • "IWC submission regarding Bill 187 July 2007 interim policies - Deeming adds insult to injury" (Nov. 2007)
  • "Injured Workers History Project bulletin #4: Deeming - it's just wrong!" [pdf]
  • ONIWG submission to the Minister on Bill 187 with suggested amendments on deeming (April 18, 2007)



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Unfunded Liability

For the past decade employer organizations, the WCB/WSIB and the Ministry of Labour have raised the unfunded liability as a central theme in all discussions of workers' compensation reform. The argument goes that there is an unfunded liability, that this is a bad thing that threatens the viability of the workers' compensation system, and that the elimination of the unfunded liability must therefore be a priority for the Board. Improving benefits for injured workers, or simply restoring the cost of living adjustments that once applied to injured workers' benefits, cannot be on the table until later, once the unfunded liability is eliminated.

If you accept this line of reasoning, injured workers will never see the restoration of cost of living adjustments, compensation will never be improved, and their suffering will only increase. There is another way to understand where future costs fit into the balance sheet. This other way allows for needed reform.

Read more...
  • "The injured worker community view of unfunded liability" (IWC / Bright Lights Injured Workers, Aug. 2005) [pdf]



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Universal Coverage

Although little has been done to develop workers’ compensation coverage since its inception in 1915, Justice Meredith’s foundational report states that his list was intended to be just a beginning step towards comprehensive coverage of Ontario workplaces. 

The extension of workers compensation coverage to include all workers in all workplaces in Ontario remains an important concern among injured workers.

  • Ontario Legisative Assembly : Question to the Minister of Labour on the Brock Smith report and extending coverage of workers' compensation. Andrea Horwath / Steve Peters. (December 7, 2006)
  • Ministry of Labour news release on extending mandatory coverage in the construction industry (March 28, 2006)



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Experience Rating

What is it and how does it work? For a good overview, read:

  • "Squeezing the worker: how experience rating works." / Marion Endicott. IAVGO Reporting Service v. 11, no.1 (September 1996): 6-9.] [pdf]

    "Experience Rating is having a very negative effect on injured workers. It is undermining the basic principles on which the compensation system is built--weakening the collective - liability; burdening - the smaller employers for the gain of the bigger ones; effectively denying injured workers their legitimate benefits; producing nightmares instead of peace of mind for injured workers and their families; and increasingly making the system more and more adversarial...."

  • Ontario Federation of Labour. "The Perils of Experience Rating: Exposed!" (October 5, 2007)
    The OFL report shows that, far from being an incentive for safety and injury prevention, the practice encourages employers to mis-report and under-report accidents, to force injured workers back to work before they are medically ready, and to pay workers sick pay rather than have them receive compensation benefits.... [Report | Press release]
  • IWC response to the WCB/WSIB Consultation on Accreditation for Ontario Workplaces (May 30, 2007)
    In its submission on the Board's initiative on workplace health and safety, Injured Workers' Consultants notes that, if planned well, accreditation provides some opportunity to re-direct the use of experience rating incentives.

Media on Experience Rating [click here for recent news coverage]

Questions in the Legislative Assembly

WCB announces experience rating review [News release, Mar. 10, 2008]



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Return to Work - Early & Safe?

Bill 99 is premised on the fiction that the "workplace parties", injured worker and employer, are equal and best positioned to ensure that injured workers have an early and safe return to work. Self reliance is touted as the means to achieve this, so the Board need not become involved. With a little training or encouragement, injured workers are on a level playing field with all the other job seekers.


The result we are seeing is that the Board has a license to cut benefits when the employer calls and claims that suitable work is available at no wage loss. The Board counts another success story and takes no responsibility for seeing whether the job is really suitable, whether it has really been offered to the worker, or whether it can be sustained. The injured worker is blamed for the lack of success.
Workers compensation becomes an arbitrary system of short term benefits - when you are supposed to be healed, you are cut off. We are finding that more injured workers are being cut off benefits without suitable work available or are being forced to go back to work before they are healed or are being forced to do work that conflicts with their medical restrictions.


In 2005 the Workers' Compensation Board proposed draft policies to address longstanding problems with ESRTW; based on response, a second set of draft policies was issued in October 2006 [summary of the second consultation, Aug. 2007]

Read responses and recommendations...

  • "Injured Workers' Consultants Community Legal Clinic submissions to the WSIB/WCB Consultation on Early and Safe Return to Work Policies 2007" [February 2007] [pdf]
  • "Submission of Injured Workers' Consultants Community Legal Clinic to the WSIB/WCB Consultation on Early and Safe Return to Work Policies" [January 2006] [pdf]




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Permanent Disability Compensation


Permanent disability compensation is an issue because the compensation is disappearing even though the permanent disabilities are not. One of the founding principles of workers’ compensation established by Meredith was compensation for as long as the disability lasts. Lifelong pensions for lifelong disabilities was a cornerstone. This era ended in 1989 when Bill 162 came into force. Wage loss payments never fully recognized the impact of permanent disabilities. The obligation to re-employ injured workers in their old job was no help to those who were not able to perform their old job. Bill 99 further reduces permanent disability compensation because a job does not even have to be available for the Board to deem an injured worker to have the earnings from it. The system pretends that with a little training, the permanently disabled are on a level playing field with the able bodied competing for the same jobs. But systemic discrimination is still a reality for the vast majority of injured workers with permanent disabilities. About 80% are currently unemployed in spite of the Boards efforts. They are the last hired, the first fired and the worst paid. As long as this remains true, the compensation system must recognize this in benefits and services.

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