Legal Defence Fund Established

May 15, 2014 - In response to the latest attacks on the right of injured workers to their benefits and the systematic dismantling of the 100-year-old public compensation system, the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups (ONIWG) is setting up a legal defence fund to enable it to launch legal challenges against the WSIB and the government. The establishment of the fund was announced at the May 9 picket at the Ministry of Labour in Toronto. Peter Page, past President of ONIWG who is spearheading the initiative, also issued a letter explaining the problems they are addressing.

In the letter, Page states: "Over the last twenty years government has been cutting benefits to injured workers, changing policy in an effort to address the unfunded liability of the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) -- which only became a problem after the Mike Harris Conservatives froze employer premium rates. Currently under the direction of I. David Marshall, President of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) and Elizabeth Witmer the Chair of the WSIB we have seen unprecedented attacks upon injured worker's benefits, frankly we feel they are going against injured workers human rights under the current Compensation Act. The policy changes are aimed at worker benefits pure and simple. This has to stop!"

Page continues: "Our system should remain within the public realm and at arm's length from government. Each new government has made legislative changes to our Workers' Compensation System, all to the detriment of the workers injured on the job. Many injured workers now rely on welfare as their source of income or CPP disability as the WSIB has denied them their benefits or deemed them capable of returning to the workforce regardless of their actual medical condition that prevents them from doing so.

"If some policies now being proposed by the government through its policy review are implemented injured workers' work-related disabilities will be systematically blamed on 'pre-existing conditions' including undiagnosed and asymptomatic conditions. The definition of 'pre-existing conditions' is so broad that it includes factors that are simply a part of normal aging." Page states that "[t]his approach is fundamentally wrong. If a worker is injured at work, she or he should be compensated for any resulting disability, even if that worker is older or more vulnerable to disability for other reasons."

Page points out that the arrangement with injured workers when the compensation system was established was that workers gave up their right to sue the companies that employed them in exchange for fair and timely compensation through a public program paid for by the employers.

ONIWG is calling on all injured workers, trade unions, legal clinics and like-minded activists to assist them in raising money for the Legal Defence Fund which will be used to take collective legal action through means such as class action suits or charter challenges against the violations of injured workers' rights. As well as putting together the funds to take legal action ONIWG is asking injured workers to send in their experiences with cuts to and denials of benefits by the WSIB so they can better assess what has been taking place over the recent period and how best to defend injured workers' rights within this situation.

Cheques should be made out to the ONIWG Legal Defence Fund and sent to the following address:

ONIWG Legal Defence Fund
203 - 620 Concession Street
Hamilton, ON
L8V 1B6

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