Preparing for Chronic Occupational Stress Compensation

What is unusual is that this change will add billions of dollars of new compensation costs for the WSIB and the employers who fund the system, but it only appears as a footnote in the Budget itself.

The WSIB has now issued a consultation on a proposed policy for Traumatic or Chronic Mental Stress. It proposes that they will allow for chronic mental stress arising out of and in the course of employment to be effective for injury that occurs on, or after, January 1, 2018. It also proposes that they will maintain the exclusion from entitlement for mental stress caused by an employer’s decisions or actions such as terminations, demotions and discipline.

The draft policy proposes the standard of proof and causation that "In all cases, the WSIB decision-maker must be satisfied, on balance of probabilities that the traumatic events, or the cumulative effect of the series of traumatic events caused, or significantly contributed to, the traumatic mental stress." This means that the standard of proof is the significance test which has been interpreted as the minority of the causation to be associated with events in the workplace. Workplace stress, until now, has been excluded from the Act largely because of the difficulty in separating workplace and non-workplace causation. The policy proposal doesn’t suggest how this will be addressed beyond the above test.

The WSIB consultation and draft policy are both very vague in explaining the policy direction, providing options or supporting its proposed direction. It doesn’t include any sort of financial impact statement or project the impact on assessment rates. The OGCA, through the CEC, has approached the WSIB asking for important information and appropriate time to deal with such an important matter. We will regularly update members as the proposal moves forward.

This change will redefine the nature of the WSIB and the mix of claims it will manage. It will cause a much greater focus on employee mental health and place greater focus on employers effectively managing workplace bullying and harassment.