A website for injured workers, their advocates and a better compensation system in B.C.

Unions & Workers’ Compensation
Highlights from different unions about their campaigns and publicly available research and resources.

About us
We bring together research and teaching resources to support injured workers and their advocates in their B.C. compensation claims.

Member Portal
A member-only portal to share teaching material, specialized material and commentary on compensation issues.

News & Views
Updates, news and recent decisions from WorkSafe, WCAT and the courts, as well as blogs and commentary (Compensation Café) on compensation issues.
What’s New: January 2025
It’s a New Year, and there is new material on the IWRAP website, introduced below in 4 sections – For Advocates, News, Research and Community. Next month, there will be a special IWRAP update on the urgent topic of Claims Suppression.
For Advocates: January 2025
- Compensation Café – The Café has a new blog by Kevin Love on Issues to Watch as WorksafeBC Starts Enforcing the New Duty to Maintain Employment. Kevin’s blog, in a Q & A format, covers key issues that advocates can face in the new Duty to Maintain Employment (DTME). The whole DMTE is still muddy, especially when it intersects with the Duty to Accommodate, but Kevin’s blog is a beacon of light. His blog is in the Café but also in the RTW section of the Members Portal.
- Training Opportunities: New training opportunities for worker advocates include:
- WCB courses offered by the Vancouver District Labour Council (VDLC) through its Education Program. On April 24th there is a course on the Duty to Accommodate and Bill 41 (instructor: Sarah O’Leary).
- The Workers’ Advisors Office (WAO) offers on-line training workshops to advocates and the schedule and registration information is available on their website. The WAO can also provide in-person and topic-specific sessions on request. If you are interested, please contact them at Outreach@wao-bc.org.
- New Materials
- The Advocacy Toolbox (Members Portal) now has new material on Workers’ Compensation Appeals – 2024. Two new manuals – one each by Sarah O’Leary (O’Leary Law) and by Lauren Chancellor (GKS Law) – were developed for their joint WCB Appeals course in the VDLC Education program (October 2024). Together, the two manuals provide excellent up-to-date coverage of practices, legal issues, evidence and strategies, from the basic to the complex.
- The Tips and Tangles section (Members Portal) now has a “tip list” of practice (and practical) tips as provided by front-line advocates participating in the monthly “Lunch and Learn” sessions, offer by the Workers’ Compensation Advocacy Group (WCAG) and the B.C. Federation of Labour. These tips will be updated as the sessions continue.
- The Resources/Featured Research section now has a poster showing an Anti-Stigma Framework developed by the WSIB and the Research Action Alliance on the Consequences of Work Injury (RAACWI) (see below). The poster has the tag line “Getting Injured On the Job is Nothing to Be Ashamed of: Stigmatizing Injured Workers Is.”
News: January 2025
Policy Challenge: A WCAT appeal challenges Policy #41.00 as being too restrictive and incompatible with the Act. When can a Worker get a new “Age of Retirement” decision?
Prior to 2020, a “age of retirement” decision (usually age 65) was made when the worker’s injury became permanent. The “age of retirement” decision is important because it is the date when the worker’s PFI pension ends, whether or not the worker is still working.
The Board’s practice of setting a “date of retirement” early in a claim was seen as unfair to workers who did not have long term plans at the time of their injury. In response, the NDP government passed the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Act (Amendment Act) in 2020, providing that , in some circumstances, workers could qualify for a new “age of retirement” decision. The new legislation expanded many workers’ entitlement to a new “age of retirement” decision and it was clearly meant to do so.
However, the Board’s interpretation of this new entitlement – Policy #41.00 – added some restrictions.
One worker has now questioned the legality of Policy #41.00, in his WCAT appeal. When he was 54 years old, this worker injured his left knee at work and was awarded 5.60% PFI to age 65. However, he continued to work past age 65 and one day, his left knee buckled and required surgery. The Board re-opened his claim for wage-loss and surgery but said that he could not have a new PFI assessment for his new permanent impairment. In their view, his first PFI decision (to age 65 only) was binding and he did not meet the criteria in for a new PFI decision as set out in Policy #41.00.
The WCAT Vice-chair hearing his appeal has referred his case to the WCAT Chair, asking that the Chair conclude that Policy #C6-41.00 is “patently unreasonable” and unsupportable by the Amendment Act. One union made a submission in this referral and that submission, by Jim Parker, is set out in the “Union” section of the IWRAP website. Stay tuned!
Injuries in Board-sponsored Treatment have declined
The 2019 Review heard from many workers who were referred to third-party treatment programs against the recommendations of their doctors or who were injured or harmed in these programs. At the time, we were informed that statistics on these injuries in treatment were not available. [New Directions, pp. 92-93 and Recommendation #13].
Recently, the Board released such statistics. The numbers of workers injured in treatment (or travelling to or from treatment) for 2017-2021 are:
- 2017: 395
- 2018: 363
- 2019: 309
- 2020: 202
- 2021: 135
It is good news is that the number of (reported) injuries in treatment has declined. The Board has also set up a HCS Quality Assurance team, who will follow up on worker complaints about the safety of Board-sponsored treatment programs.
If you have any concern about the safety, cleanliness or equipment in a treatment program or if a worker experiences an injury or a serious incident in the program, please contact this QA team at WorkSafeBC.
Research: January 2025
Good research on all compensation matters is essential for developing good policy and promoting good outcomes.
In Ontario, the Institute for Work and Health (IWH), an independent research organization, is conducting such research. Its website is a gold-mine of research results. And every year the IWH publishes a one-page summary of their key research findings, called “5 Things We Think You Should Know”. The 2024 summary, includes the following:
Re: opioid use
In a large sample study by IWH and the Occupational Cancer Research Centre, found that formerly injured workers have higher risk of opioid-related harms than the general population, and that the occupational groups with the greatest risks included construction, forestry and logging, materials handling and processing.
The findings are consistent with case studies done by Kathy Tomlinson “How workers’ comp fanned the flames of the opioid crisis”, published in the Globe & Mail, June 18, 2020. (available in the Resources/Featured Research section of IWRAP). Could it be that this persistent problem is a direct result of the Board’s disgraceful treatment of workers with permanent chronic pain?
IWH findings on CM interactions and poor mental health
Another important IWH study followed a number of injured workers for 18 months after a work injury or illness and found that injured workers who experienced poor interactions with their case managers were more likely to experience a mental health disorder. There are several summaries of this study on the Injured Workers Online website, including a power point presentation “Do poor case manager interactions during worker’s compensation claims impact mental health following a workplace injury?” by Christina Orchard.
RSI Research – Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)
OHCOW celebrates its 26th Repetitive Strain Injury Day or “RSI Day” with a presentation series on Musculoskeletal Disorders and Injury Prevention, held throughout February 2025. This valuable series is offered virtually and across many countries. Information and registration available here.
Note: B.C. continues to be an outlier in Canada, in not treating RSI as injuries, and limiting their acceptance as diseases. (See New Directions, pp . 198-205 and the Compensation Café blog When is a Injury Not an Injury? August 27, 2022)
Community: January 2025
Recommended Book:
Who Killed Sir William? by Marion Endicott and Steve Mantis, 2024.
The title of this book – Who Killed Sir William? – refers to Sir William Merideth and to his legacy of the Historic Compromise principles as a foundation for a fair and just Workers’ Compensation system.
The two authors were participants in a well-funded community-university research project, the Research Action Alliance on the Consequences of Work Injury (RAACWI) conducted between 2003 and 2012. The RAACWI project grew out of workers’ frustration at the Ontario WCB (WSIB)’s dismissal of the evidence of injured workers and in recognition that increasing numbers of them were falling into poverty as the WSIB moved to an insurance model.
The book documents the RAACWI project but it is primarily written as a “how to” manual for empowering and supporting injured workers. It includes many detailed accounts, with “lessons learned” (the hard way, sometimes) and thoughts about building support and getting justice for injured workers. Among other lessons, the authors credit their “participatory research” model with strengthening workers’ organizations and their knowledge of the compensation system. The authors identify two especially valuable achievements:
- The RAACWI project developed a “Speaker’s School” where injured workers learned and practiced public speaking skills, and how to share their stories. In the author’s view, the Speakers’ School both empowered injured workers and educated a wide audience and it is still one of the most successful legacies of the project.
- The RAACWI project partnered with WSIB to develop anti-stigma initiatives. This resulted in WSIB issuing a poster for the workplace recognition about the role of stigma as a barrier to RTW. This resulted in WSIB publishing a poster with an Anti-Stigma Framework and the tag line “Getting Injured On the Job is Nothing to Be Ashamed of: Stigmatizing Injured Workers Is.” This poster is in the Resources/Featured Research section on the IWRAP website, as well as on the WSIB and other Ontario websites.
Who Killed Sir William is available in print and e-book format from Friesen press and from Indigo and Amazon. There is also a summary of the book here.
In Memorium:
Paul Petrie wrote this tribute on January 7, 2025. It is worth repeating.
Forty-four years ago on January 7, 1981 four carpenters, Gunther Couvreux, Donald Davis, Yrjo Mitrunen and Brian Stevenson plunged 36 stories to their death onto the Vancouver sidewalk from the top of the Bentall IV tower under construction. A 1982 coroners jury found repeated violations of site safety regulations and lack of effective enforcement of those regulations. The provincial Government conducted an inquiry into construction safety that led to some significant improvements in construction safety in the decade following the Bentall IV tragedy. Some of those improvements have been eroded in the last 3 decades with the neo-liberal deregulation drive. The epidemic of asbestos related deaths in the construction industry continues to account for almost a third of all work-related deaths in BC.
Today is a day to remember Gunther Couvreux, Donald Davis, Yrjo Mitrunen and Brian Stevenson and a day to renew efforts to reduce the risk of death and disablement in construction and all workplaces. I encourage you to take a moment today to watch this short video from the Labour Heritage Center which recognizes the loss of these workers and to reflect on some of the challenges that their tragic legacy leaves us with.