“36 years spent in poverty and pain, injured worker says” (CBC News, Aug. 18, 2015)
Fred Palmer still lives with the chronic pain, financial and mental health aftermath of serious injuries sustained while working on a railway in northern Ontario over three decades ago. With a crushed ankle, back injury and untreated brain injury, he receives a $230 monthly disability pension and the frustration and stress of dealing with what he describes as an abusive appeals process of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.
In an interview with Azzo Rezzoni of CBC News TV program “Here and Now” (see video), he talks of the toll taken by workers’ compensation claims practices on his health and – as his research into the subject over the past 10 years has found – that of numerous other injured workers.