IWRAP

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: 

• A new Addendum by Paul Petrie “WCB at the Crossroads: Experience Rating and Claims Suppression – An Addendum to “Restoring the Balance” – April 2025” was just released and has been provided to the Minister of Labour and to the WCB’s Board of Directors. This important and extensive report (16 pages) is in the “Featured Research” section. 

• A summary of this Addendum in Compensation Café – Petrie Report: Claims Suppression 2025 by Janet Patterson. 

• A Compensation Café contribution by Rolf Harrison – Weaponizing RTW: Does this Sound Familiar? This blog explores workers’ experiences under Bill 41. 

• A plain English article by Marion Endicott explores the connection between experience rating and other negative impacts, including claims suppression in “Perverse Outcomes: Notes From the Field on How Financial Incentives in Ontario’s Workers’ Compensation System Cause Harm to a Public Institution and Create a New Occupational Hazard” . The article is available in the “Featured Research” section.

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. 

2. 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.