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A look-back on 2021

December 30, 2021

In leaving 2021 behind, a round up of selected events from the past year that underscore increased awareness of social and health inequities that face too many workers and their families; the power of solidarity and support, collaboration and compassion among the…

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Support groups like Peel Injured Workers Group offer a lifeline

July 8, 2021

As injured worker activist Catherine Fenech notes in the Brampton Guardian this week, work injury and illness can severely affect mental health in addition to the physical impacts. For workers with permanent injuries in particular, depression, social isolation and loneliness are all…

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“A disregard for workers’ environmental & health concerns”: lessons of the McIntyre Powder program

March 30, 2021

A recently published article “Dust versus Dust: Aluminum Therapy and Silicosis in the Canadian and Global Mining” (Canadian Historical Review, 102(1) Mar. 2021: 1-26) provides a thorough, if disturbing, examination of the forces in play behind the development and widespread adoption of…

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Amazon’s workplace safety under scrutiny

December 14, 2020

In a Toronto Star investigation reporter Sara Mojtehedzadeh has thrown new light on Amazon’s record of worker injury and illness in Canadian warehouses. The newspaper has confirmed at least 25 COVID-19 cases in Amazon’s Brampton warehouses alone. Documents received through Freedom of…

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COVID-19 in the workplace and compensation claims

November 24, 2020

According to a recent CBC news investigation, at least 26,000 workers across Canada have filed workers’ compensation claims due to COVID-19. As the report highlights, these statistics present a misleading picture of what’s actually happening in the workplace. David Newberry, of…

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Recognizing occupational cancer claims – what will it take?

July 12, 2020

A report released Tuesday finds only a small fraction of those who get cancer on the job ever get workers’ compensation. Commissioned in April 2018 by the Ministry of Labour, the review, conducted by Dr Paul Demers of the Occupational Cancer Research…

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“The pandemic is a mirror, and it shows us who we care about. And who we don’t”

June 29, 2020

Treatment of some farm workers ‘a national disgrace’: Minister Canada’s Minister of Health Patty Hajdu was speaking to the special committee in the House of Commons following the death of the third migrant farmworker to die of COVID-19 on an Ontario farm.…

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Spotlight on WCB policies and opioids

June 21, 2020

In a Globe and Mail investigation, reporter Kathy Tomlinson has explored how workers’ comp fanned the flames of an opioid crisis that leaves addiction, overdose and death in its wake. Her examination of appeal decisions and the experiences of injured workers reveals…

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Migrant farmworkers at the epicentre

June 7, 2020

Only a few days after the heartbreaking death of essential worker 31-year-old Mexican Bonifacio Romero, a second young migrant farmworker has died from COVID-19 in the Windsor-Essex region. Nearly one-fifth of confirmed cases in the area have been agricultural workers, local and…

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McIntyre Powder & Parkinson’s study – what does it mean for occupational disease claims?

May 12, 2020

In the Toronto Star’s five-part investigative series “The Uncounted”, reporter Greg Mercer documents how and why official statistics, in capturing only accepted disease claims from provincial compensation boards, count what many epidemiologists say is just a fraction of suspected occupational disease…

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