A recent decision by Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (WSIAT) confirms the circumstance under which an injured worker may be reimbursed for the cost of medical cannabis. It has an interesting connection to the very first case that allowed reimbursement for the cost of medical cannabis as a health care measure for treating a compensable injury.
The first decision allowing entitlement to medical cannabis for treating a workplace injury in Ontario was in a series of WSIAT decisions leading up to Decision 2335/06R. In that case the injured worker had started using medical cannabis that he obtained from a compassion club prior to legalization and receipts were not provided for obvious reasons. He later transitioned to a Health Canada permit but only purchased medical cannabis from Health Canada for a short while. He stopped when Health Canada required him to grow his own and he was not successful. He continued to purchase it from the compassion club. Entitlement was denied by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) in 2002 and allowed by the WSIAT in 2008. The WSIAT directed the WSIB to reimburse him for his cannabis expenses back to the date he received a Health Canada permit to possess it for medical use.
Since receipts were not available for purchases from the compassion centre, the injured worker supplied the WSIB with a signed statement for each purchase, showing the date, quantity and price paid. The WSIB reimbursed the injured worker.
The injured worker in Decision 971/23 had been allowed entitlement to medical cannabis from the date of his Health Canada permit by the WSIAT in an earlier appeal. He had rarely purchased it from Health Canada because he could not afford Health Canada prices. He usually purchased the medical cannabis from a compassion club for a much lower price. He documented all purchases himself, similar to the injured worker in Decision 2335/06. The WSIB declined to reimburse him for the purchases from compassion clubs because there were no receipts. He appealed to the WSIAT arguing that the WSIB’s position frustrated the earlier WSIAT decision granting him entitlement to reimbursement.
The WSIAT heard evidence from the community legal worker who represented the injured worker in WSIAT Decision 2335/06. She described how the WSIB reimbursed that worker for medical cannabis purchased from a compassion club based on documents prepared by the worker. The decision [to be posted on CanLII ] also reviews subsequent WSIAT decisions where entitlement to reimbursement for medical cannabis from a compassion club was allowed. The Vice Chair directed the WSIB to reimburse the injured worker in accordance with his itemized documents confirming the cannabis club purchases.