$80M lawsuit accuses WSIB of shortchanging injured workers
· Toronto Sun
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OTTAWA — Allegations that unauthorized calculations were used to determine benefits are behind an $80-million class-action lawsuit launched against Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).
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The statement of claim, filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice by lead plaintiff Gordon Polevoy, accuses the WSIB of ignoring statutory requirements to index annual benefits to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), as mandated by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.
Instead, the suit alleges the board created an unauthorized 24-month “averaging method” that suppressed annual benefit hikes.
Taylor Mergui Law Group Partner Ryan O’Connor, who, along with Gurpreet Farmaha, is acting as co-counsel for the suit, told the Toronto Sun that this is not only an important lawsuit for injured workers, but also one to ensure the rule of law is respected.
“The WSIB acknowledges that its prohibited benefits indexation calculation is meant to smooth out sudden inflationary spikes, but by substituting its own unauthorized indexation percentage for the one legally required, over 100,000 injured workers lost an additional 2% increase to their benefits at the start of 2022 alone,” he said in a statement.
“That lower increase is compounded year-over-year and is a benefits shortfall that some will experience for decades, and even into their normal retirement years.”
For a worker earning $1,000 a week in 2022, O’Connor explained, they would lose out on more than $1,000 in benefits for that year alone.
“That’s money that workers could have used to buy a month’s worth of groceries for their families, or the difference between whether or not the heat is turned off in the middle of winter,” he added.
Benefit gap hits hard
Tracked by Statistics Canada, the CPI is a key economic metric that tracks price changes in a fixed “basket” of consumer goods and services and serves as the gold-standard measure of inflation.
In 2022, when inflation surged with a 4.7% increase in the CPI, the WSIB capped worker benefit increases at 2.7%.
In response to the lawsuit, the WSIB told the Toronto Sun it provides yearly cost-of-living adjustments for recipients.
“To calculate the indexing factor each year, the WSIB uses an averaging method that is consistent with how the Canada Pension Plan calculates cost of living increases to the CPP disability benefits,” read a statement from the board.
“Using the average over the year, rather than a point-in-time change in CPI, is a more reasonable reflection of the inflation over the entire year. For example, someone receiving income replacement over the last four years would have received an increase of 16.36% under the averaging method we use vs. 14.89% under the point-in-time method.”
O’Connor said the purpose of the suit is to ensure those injured on the job get what they’re owed.
“We look forward to seeking redress for the injured firefighters, police officers, frontline workers, tradespeople and employees across Ontario who struggle to make ends meet while WSIB — which has a $40-billion employer-paid fund — leaves them with cost-of-living crumbs,” he said.