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

What’s New: June 2025

There is a new blog to add to April’s special edition on claims suppression.  

The blog by Janet Patterson, “B.C. Claims Suppression: Workers have no Protection or Remedy”  sets out how the Board continues to deny that there is any remedy or protection for workers who are fired for filing a compensation claim. In its adjudications, the Board’s Legal Department consistently states  that even after the addition of section 73(2) in 2022, “filing a claim” is not a protected right under the Act. 

What’s New: April 2025

WCB and Claims Suppression 

The wide-spread occurrence of claim suppression is a threat to the integrity and purpose of workers compensation.

This is a special edition of IWRAP, focusing on claims suppression in B.C. and the recent research about how it is incentivized by WCB’s funding mechanism for employers (“experience rating”) and by the lack of enforcement by the WCB. 

This special focus includes: 

Two aspects of Petrie’s Addendum are especially noteworthy: 

  1. Petrie includes the experiences of an injured worker – Paul Henzel – who wrote of his injury and experience in a book, Crushed Alive and who gave his consent for his experiences to be public. This is in keeping with Petrie’s perspective that compensation must be worker-centred. 
  1. Petrie makes a final recommendation that WCB must transition back to a funding system based on collective liability, in order to remove the financial incentives for claim suppression. 

Update on Age of Retirement Policy Challenge (power-point)

As noted in the January update, the issue of the legality of Policy #41.00 has been referred to the WCAT Chair. Since this policy sets out a Board practice for how and when to determine the “age of retirement” for permanently injured workers, the policy is important – it effectively decides when their compensation benefits will end. No WCAT decision has yet been made. 

Michelle Poulsen of the Hospital Employee’s Union made a presentation to the WCAG’s “Lunch & Learn” series in March of 2025, and her power-point is an excellent summary of the background and the “age of retirement” issue. The power-point Update on Challenge to Retirement Age Policy is available in IWRAP’s “Union” section.