What if your injury has left you with a permanent injury that prevents you from returning to your former job?
Phantom wage for a phantom job…
- If you are unable to find a suitable job, the workers’ compensation Board (WSIB) practice of ‘deeming’ will pretend you have a job.
- The Board can then reduce or eliminate your benefits by ‘deeming’ you to be receiving the wages from a job that you do not have and have no real hope of getting … (just over half of Canadians with disabilities are employed )
- While injured workers support recent legislation increasing Ontario’s minimum wage, it means however that the WSIB can deem workers at a high minimum wage – and reduce their benefits accordingly
- Because of deeming, injured workers are being forced onto social assistance and into poverty in increasing numbers.
Injured workers and their advocates have long called for wage loss compensation to be based on the worker’s “real life” employment situation.
- No Cuts Based on Phantom Jobs is one of the key demands of ONIWG’s Workers’ Comp Is A Right Campaign.
- The 2018 Backgrounder: The Problem with Deeming discusses the faulty presumptions behinds the Board’s policy and practice
- The Respecting Injured Workers Act (Bill 57) to address deeming was introduced again in 2022 by Wayne Gates (NDP) but not debated before the session ended
Deeming or dreaming?
Although Labour Minister Steve Peters introduced changes in Bill 187 (2007) that he said would eliminate deeming (now called ‘determining’), the WSIB has since expanded deeming by inventing the concept of “underemployment”. This means that even if a worker can find a job in the field he or she has been retrained for, the Board can still ignore their actual wages and deem them to be earning more than they actually do, if it thinks there is higher paying work out there.
The 72-month “lock-in” provides some protection by accepting that, after 6 years of permanent disability, the injured worker’s earning situation is not likely to improve and so at that point benefits will no longer be reviewed. However in practice that too is now being targeted to reduce the costs of long duration claims.
- Wilson, Jim. 2024 Apr. 8. “Ontario WSIB’s ‘deeming policy is dehumanizing’ says case worker of seasonal worker.” Canadian Occupational Safety
- Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic. 2021 Nov. 30. Submission to the Standing Committee on Bill 43.
- Ontario Network of Injured Workers’ Groups. 2019 Sep. Submission to the UN CRPD: Deeming Laws and Practices as Violations of the Rights of People with Work-acquired Disabilities in Canada.
- Ontario Network of Injured Workers’ Groups. Research Action Committee. 2019 May. Phantom Jobs, Empty Pockets.
- Robert Storey. 2007. Deeming – It’s Just Wrong Toronto: Bancroft Institute. (IWHP bulletin, no. 4)