Affordable Ontario for injured workers: Add your voice!

December 7, 2022 at 12:00 PM



Greetings, 
On behalf of our province’s injured workers, the Ontario Network of Injured Workers’ Groups (ONIWG) is reminding the Ford Government of some simple steps that would help ease the poverty experienced by workers injured on the job.  

Please see the information below, and click on the links to add your voice to the campaign for vital reforms to Ontario Workers’ Compensation system. 

Thank you for your support.  Injured workers in our province need our help!
In solidarity,
Unifor ORC Workers Compensation Committee
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Help us make life more affordable for workers injured & made ill in Ontario
This holiday season looks to be difficult for everyone. For those who have been injured or made ill at work in Ontario - especially those who have been cut off from benefits - it is a particularly dark time. 

We have a few demands to make life more affordable for those affected by work injury, and we are are asking you to sign a letter to endorse them. However, we know that our demands aren't the only ones that need to be met in order to make life more manageable in these difficult times, so we're making room for you to add your own voice. 

If you support the demands we're making, please download our demand letter, sign your name and (if you want to) add your own demands, then send it back to us at [email protected]. We will add it to the stack we deliver to the Minister of Labour on December 12th. 

Our Demands
The Ontario Network of Injured Workers’ Groups (ONIWG) wants to take this opportunity to remind the Government of Ontario of some of the basic steps they could take to ease the awful poverty experienced by those who have been hurt on the job. The easiest thing the government could do is simply honour its election promise of raising Loss of Earnings benefits to 90% of pre-injury wages, as a first step. 

Additionally, the government must remember and act on the core demands of ONIWG’s Workers’ Comp Is A Right campaign:

1. End Deeming – No more phantom jobs. Stop cutting injured and ill worker benefits by pretending they have a job when they are unable to work or to find suitable work. The previous legislature sat on a private members bill that would end deeming (Bill 119) for years without even calling it for a vote. A new version of the bill will be introduced soon and the government must do the right thing and pass it, or introduce anti-deeming legislation of their own.
2. Listen to our doctors – Stop ignoring the advice of workers’ treating physicians in favour of the clearly flawed opinions of “paper doctors” who never meet or examine the injured or ill worker.
3. Stop cutting benefits based on asymptomatic pre-existing conditions – This practice – imported from the insurance industry – cuts workers off benefits by blaming so-called “pre-existing conditions” for workers’ injuries, even if the condition never caused the worker to feel any pain or miss a single day of work for their entire pre-injury life.

Stay safe. 
In Solidarity,
Workers Comp Is A Right (WCIAR)