The Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) is trying to radically change the workers’ compensation system in Ontario, at the expense of all workers. It is attempting to push through a series of policies that, if passed, will ensure that fewer injured workers will be entitled to compensation, and those who are entitled will get far less. And costs that should be paid by employers will be downloaded onto working people by pushing more injured workers onto social assistance.

These draft policies are threatening to the long-term well being of injured workers. They direct decision-makers to focus on cutting compensation by blaming work-related disabilities on “pre-existing conditions” rather than the work injury. But these “pre-existing conditions” may have been completely asymptomatic and undiagnosed before the work accident, and in many cases they are simply a part of normal aging. Even if they never affected a worker’s ability to do his or her job, these “conditions” will be used as an excuse to cut benefits.

This approach is fundamentally wrong and profoundly unjust. Cutting workers’ compensation doesn’t make the costs of work injuries go away. It just means that injured workers and their families will be forced deeper into poverty and onto social assistance.

All workers deserve to be protected if they get hurt at work. These policies, though, go the other direction – they take away protection and restrict compensation. Because of this, these draft policies must be scrapped now.

Please sign a letter to Premier Kathleen Wynne, asking her to hold true to her poverty reduction platform by stepping in to stop these regressive policies from being implemented.