100 years ago Meredith introduced Ontario’s public no-fault, non-adversarial workers’ compensation system. Today injured workers call on the WSIB/WCB and the government to respect the basic principles and “historic compromise” , under which they gave up the right to sue employers in exchange for fair and timely compensation.
When policies are driven by “look to deny” cost-cutting rather than legal principles, and “medicalized” decision-making blames age or pre-existing conditions rather than the impact of a work-related cause, our system seems increasingly to be run on the private insurance model – far from Meredith’s call for “full justice, no half-measures”.