Some of the proposed changes to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act (WSIA) in schedule 9 of omnibus Bill 105, Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act, are ringing alarm bells. The Bill could pass very quickly – the injured worker community and their advocates want to ensure you are informed of the issues. Please call or email the Premier/ Minister of Labour/your MPP to let them know your concerns [find your MPP here].
Podcast discussion of the changes
To help everyone understand these changes, the history behind them and potential serious impacts, four Injured Workers’ Community Clinic staff members recently sat down to discuss the issues in episode #7 “Understanding Bill 105’s Impact on Injured Workers ” of the podcast series Labour Pains. You can listen here on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. It is an urgent conversation that could affect all workers made injured or ill on the job in Ontario, whether in the past or the future.
A request for public hearings
The Ontario Legal Clinics Workers Compensation Network, comprised of legal workers who handle workers’ compensation cases from the province’s 72 community legal clinics, has called on the Government to hold committee hearings on the proposed WSIA amendments in Bill 105. [download here a full copy of their April 28 letter to the Premier, Minister of Red Tape Reduction and Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training & Skills Development]:
“… The government’s decision to restore WSIB benefit levels to 90% of net earnings and to extend compensation for lost earnings beyond the age 65 based cut-off is good news for injured workers across the province. However, there are other features of Bill 105 that will create huge problems for permanently disabled workers, consequences that were never intended. It will not reduce red tape; it will begin a lifetime of red tape reporting and bureaucratic procedures for the permanently disabled workers that will place their compensation for lost earnings in jeopardy every day.
We are particularly concerned about the proposed elimination of the 72-month limit on the WSIB reviews of loss of earnings benefits and the use of unrelated social benefit payments to reduce WSIB benefits. These will have a profound long-term negative impact on the lives of injured workers with permanent disabilities.
We have seen no evidence of any problem this would address. However, we have considerable experience with WSIB reviews of benefit levels. Loss of earnings benefits are reduced in most reviews. Benefits are reduced because the injured worker, who has not been able to obtain any employment, is later deemed to have higher wages in the job the WSIB told them to find. This undermines rehabilitation and creates psychological distress when injured workers face a reduction in
compensation at any time. Now, this injustice ends after 72 months. Eliminating the lock-in means that injured workers will suffer this demoralizing punishment of reduced benefits every year and reducing benefits will download the cost of supporting them onto the publicly funded social assistance programs.
The increased administrative costs of continuing reviews of injured workers receiving compensation for lost earnings will be staggering. And the increase in negative decisions will flood the appeals system, paralyzing the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal. Similarly, deciding each injured worker’s expected retirement date one at a time will expand the number of decisions to be made in the WSIB process exponentially. As with the ongoing reviews, the resulting negative decisions will flood the appeals system, both the WSIB Appeals Division and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal. There is a simpler way to end age discrimination in workers compensation.
Sending the proposals to a committee for public hearings will allow for careful consideration of these complications and provide an opportunity for the government to revise the bill that could resolve these concerns before problems arise.
Thank you for considering this request.
John McKinnon
Co-chair, Ontario Legal Clinics Workers’ Compensation Network