Letter addresses issues of concern regarding the proposed changes to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act in schedule 9 of omnibus Bill 105, Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act. In particular, 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; decision-making process on age of retirement. The Ontario Legal Clinics Workers’ Compensation Network calls on the Government to hold committee hearings for further scrutiny of the legislation.
28 April 2026
The Honourable Doug Ford, Premier
The Honourable Andrea Khanjin, Minister of Red Tape Reduction
The Honourable David Piccini, Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development
Dear Premier Ford, Ministers Khanjin and Piccini:
Re: need for committee hearings on proposed WSIA amendments in Bill 105
The Ontario Legal Clinics’ Workers’ Compensation Network is comprised of legal workers who handle workers’ compensation cases from Ontario’s 72 community legal clinics. Our members are involved in individual representation, continuing public legal education, and consideration of law and policy reforms. Many of our members have practiced workers’ compensation law for several decades.
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.
Yours truly,
John McKinnon
Co-chair, Ontario Legal Clinics Workers Compensation Network
Download OLCWCN letter re need for committee hearings on proposed WSIA amendments in Bill 105