Submissions on Bill 105, Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act, 2026

Printable version of Submissions on Bill 105, Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act, 2026

Introduction

These submissions focus on Schedule 9 of Bill 105, Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act, 2026, which amends the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 (WSIA).

Schedule 9 of Bill 105 would introduce several amendments to the WSIA that move Ontario toward a more fair and just workers’ compensation system. But those measures are limited and incomplete in addressing significant historical and ongoing injustices. And they come with measures that unfairly target the most disabled and disadvantaged injured workers. In particular:

• The 5% increase to Loss of Earnings (LOE) and survivor benefit rates partly addresses a longstanding injustice that has left injured workers and survivors undercompensated for nearly three decades. It should, however, be made retroactive to address benefit cuts that were made because of the financial mismanagement of Ontario’s workers’ compensation system. Bill 105 also fails to restore the 5% cut to the loss of retirement contributions that occurred along with the reduction in income replacement benefits.
• Extending mandatory coverage to residential care facilities operated by private employers and group homes is the right thing to do. It is, however, an incomplete solution to Ontario’s approach to coverage and leaves over two million workers without access to workers’ compensation.
• The amendments that would permit the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board to extend LOE benefits to workers after they turn 65 are a positive step towards eliminating age discrimination and the under compensation of older injured workers. The amendments, however, are too narrow and fail to address the reality that more and more Ontario workers are working past age 65.
• Eliminating the 72-month final review (“lock-in”) would be unfair and would harm the injured workers most severely affected by their injuries. If Bill 105 is passed in its current form, these injured workers will face years of uncertainty and face the constant threat of losing their income-replacement benefits. They will be on perpetual WSIB benefit probation.
• The proposed cap on injured worker income is unfair and unprincipled. It would reduce permanently disabled workers’ LOE benefits because of payments that are neither employment income nor intended to compensate them for their injury.

OPSEU/SEFPO’s perspective

Ontario Public Service Employees Union/Syndicat des employés de la fonction publique de l’Ontario (OPSEU/SEFPO) represents approximately 200,000 members from all over Ontario. Our members work throughout the provincial public sector and the broader public sector, including in the Ontario Public Service, for Ontario’s Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, in the healthcare sector, in the education sector, and for a wide range of community agencies.

OPSEU/SEFPO has a unique perspective on Ontario’s workers’ compensation system. Not only does OPSEU/SEFPO represent its members in their WSIB appeals, it is also the exclusive bargaining agent for workers’ compensation advocates at the Office of the Worker Adviser, the Office of the Employer Adviser, and several community legal clinics including the Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic.

From this perspective, OPSEU/SEFPO makes the following submissions and recommendations.

1. The increase to LOE and survivor benefits should be retroactive.

We commend the increase to LOE and survivor benefits to 90% of pre-accident net average earnings. The increase restores these benefits to their pre-1998 levels, before they were cut because the then-named Workers’ Compensation Board lost control of its unfunded liability — largely due to a decade of freezing and cutting premiums along with excessive rebates through the WCB’s employer incentive program.¹

Along with the reduction of income replacement benefits, the government also reduced the WSIB’s contribution to retirement benefits from 10% to 5% of income replacement benefits. Injured workers should never have had to pay for the financial mismanagement of the workers’ compensation system. But through the reduction in income replacement benefits, along with aggressive claims management and anti-worker decision making, the WSIB’s financial circumstances have changed dramatically — so dramatically that between premium reductions and surplus rebates the WSIB has passed nearly $27 billion dollars to employers in the last decade.²

To put it plainly, injured workers and survivors have paid a steep price for the mismanagement of Ontario’s workers’ compensation system while employers have seen their premiums plummet and receive cheques from the WSIB.

If the WSIB is so flush with money that it can hand employers billions of dollars, surely it can do more for those who the system is supposed to help.

OPSEU/SEFPO therefore recommends that, in addition to increasing LOE and survivor benefits rates to 90% of pre-accident net earnings:

• the WSIB’s contribution to loss of retirement income benefits be increased by 5% to 10% of a workers LOE; and
• these changes be retroactive to January 1, 1998.

2. Mandatory coverage for for-profit residential care facilities and group homes is positive, but the coverage model should be changed.

OPSEU/SEFPO strongly supports the inclusion of for-profit residential care facilities and group homes as mandatorily covered industries under Schedule 1 of Ontario Regulation 175/98. OPSEU/SEFPO represents employees from many employers in these industries.

It should never have been optional for for-profit residential care facilities and group homes to be covered. Jobs with these employers are often dangerous — they are physically demanding, high stress, and carry a high risk of workplace violence. There is no reason why workers in these industries should not have the same protections against work-related injury as other workers in Ontario. Addressing this gap in coverage is the right thing to do.

But this amendment would only be a small patch in the leaky ship that is Ontario’s workers’ compensation coverage model. Over two million workers will still be left without coverage. According to the WSIB’s statistics for 2025 only 75.1% of workers in Ontario are covered, leaving 24.9% or 2,044,605 uncovered.³ Bill 105 would only address around 1.4% (29,000) of these workers.⁴

In addition to leaving over two million workers without WSIB coverage, Bill 105 does not address the fundamental problem — Ontario’s anachronistic “inclusionary” model of workers’ compensation coverage. Under this model organizations are only mandatorily covered if they are in an industry specifically listed in one of the Schedules in Ontario Regulation 175/98.

The inclusionary model is problematic both in that it arbitrarily fails to include certain existing industries (such as private health care practices, private day cares and private schools to name a few) and also in that it requires regulatory amendments to cover new emerging industries.

For these reasons, while OPSEU/SEFPO strongly supports Bill 105’s extension of coverage to for-profit residential care facilities and group homes, it recommends more fundamental change. Ontario Regulation 175/98 should be amended to move to an “exclusionary” model where employers are covered under the workers’ compensation system unless specifically excluded by regulation.

3.  The amendments to the age cut-off won’t effect meaningful change.

It is encouraging to see legislative action to address the discriminatory termination of LOE benefits at age 65 (or two years after the accident if the worker was age 63 or older when the accident happened). The Bill 105 amendments, however, would do little to prevent the unfairness and discrimination inherent in an age cut-off that presumes that all injured workers would have retired when they 65 or within two years if they were older than 63 when injured.

The cut-off fails to account for the fact workers are retiring later. The number of Canadian workers retiring after age 65 continues to climb, as does the average retirement age.⁵ In Ontario, approximately 444,200 people over the age of 65 were employed in 2025, including 165,800 over the age of 70.⁶ Given these trends, presuming that an injured worker would have retired when they turned 65 is unfair and discriminatory.

The age cut-off is particularly unjust for low-wage workers and newcomers to Canada who would never have been in a financial position to be able to retire at age 65. Ending their LOE benefits at age 65 leaves them with years of uncompensated injury-related income loss.

Bill 105 doesn’t effectively address the problems with the age cut-off. The amendments would allow the WSIB to extend a worker’s LOE past age 65 only where it determines that they were likely to continue working. But there is nothing in the Bill about how such a determination should be made — that is left to the WSIB.

If the Bill 105 amendments to the age 65 cut-off are passed as is, the WSIB will only extend benefits if the worker can provide evidence of a specific intention to retire after age 65. For the vast majority of injured workers there will be no such evidence. Unless they were very close to retirement when they were injured, few workers are likely to have a fully formed — let alone documented — plan as to when they will retire. Presuming that they would have retired at age 65 is unfair given the current realities that more people are continuing to work well past that age.

A better approach would be to extend the age-cut off to reflect the trend towards workers retiring later. OPSEU/SEFPO therefore recommends extending the age cut-off of LOE to age 70 or two years after the accident if injured at age 68, in addition to giving the Board the powers to extend LOE further as set out in Bill 105.

4.  The lock-in should be left alone.

The most troubling aspect of Bill 105 is the elimination of what is known as the “72-month lock-in” of injured workers’ LOE benefits. This would unfairly target the workers who have been most severely affected by their work-related injury and who, even with the WSIB’s return to work assistance and healthcare support, were unable to get back to their pre-accident earnings capacity after at least six years after their injury.

The lock-in recognizes that after six years (with a possible extension of up to two years further in certain circumstances) a permanently disabled injured worker’s circumstances are unlikely to improve. The lock-in gives these workers financial stability and relieves them of the burden of being subject to the constant scrutiny of the WSIB and the accident employer.

If Bill 105 passes, these injured workers will be on perpetual LOE probation. They would be subject to regular prescribed reviews and “material change” reviews by the WSIB for years, if not decades. They would be repeatedly required to prove that they are disabled, under threat of losing what is often their only significant source of income. They will often be surveilled by the WSIB or by their former employer. And many will be forced into an adversarial appeals process to keep or regain the benefits they rely on to pay their rent and feed their families.

Many workers with permanent disabilities will already have mental health conditions. They will be particularly vulnerable to the psychological toll of living under the constant threat of having their main source of income suddenly cut off.

Eliminating the lock-in would also consume WSIB resources. WSIB decision makers would have to monitor the claims of permanently disabled workers for decades. The WSIB would have to handle a marked increase in objections and appeals from employers challenging continued benefit entitlement and injured workers seeking challenging the decisions to reduce or cut-off their benefits. The resources that would be required to monitor workers for decades after their injuries and to administer many more appeals would be better used elsewhere. Workers and employers would be better served if the WSIB directed these resources towards workers with a more realistic prospect of returning to their pre-accident income levels and toward better recognition and compensation of occupational diseases.

There is no reason to eliminate the lock-in. If anything, the lock-in should occur sooner — if, even with the WSIB’s support, an injured worker is unable to recover from their injuries and return to their pre-accident income levels within five years, it is unlikely to happen at all.

OPSEU/SEFPO therefore recommends the removal of section 3 of Schedule 9 of Bill 105. The lock-in should be left alone.

5.   The post-injury earnings cap should be removed.

Bill 105 introduces a new cap on the total amount of income an injured worker can receive from both LOE and other sources. The cap is unfair and unprincipled. It penalizes injured workers for non-employment income.

Under Bill 105, the cap would be set at 100% of the worker’s pre-injury net earnings. The WSIB will be required to consider other sources of income, to be set by regulation, which will include payments made under provincial or federal legislation or payments made by or on behalf of the worker’s employer. Any income beyond the cap will result in a dollar-for-dollar reduction in the worker’s LOE benefits.

The cap would sweep in income that is neither employment income nor intended to compensate workers for their work-related injuries. It would, for example, reduce a worker’s benefits if they decided to take Canada Pension Plan retirement pension or their employment pension early — the type of decision workers often have to make, having been left in poverty because their LOE benefits are unfairly reduced because of the WSIB’s practice of deeming them to work in a job they don’t have and can’t get. It would also unfairly deduct Canada Pension Plan-Disability benefits that the worker is awarded partly or totally because of non-work-related disabilities.

The cap would also reduce a worker’s LOE for receiving government benefits aimed to support raising children, like the Canada Child Benefit, or afford housing, such as the Canada-Ontario Housing Benefit. In these circumstances, the cap would be penalizing workers for non-employment income that has little or nothing to do with their injuries.

The purpose of LOE benefits is to compensate injured workers for their injury-related loss of employment income. A worker’s pre-accident earnings are used to quantify that loss, not to set an artificial ceiling on the total amount of income

they can receive while receiving LOE. Imposing a cap that reduces LOE because of income sources unrelated either to employment or to the worker’s compensable injuries would arbitrarily reduce the compensation they receive for their injury-related loss of income.

The cap is overbroad, punitive, and unfair. It should be removed from Bill 105.

Conclusion

There are some positive, welcome, and encouraging aspects of Bill 105. In particular, the 5% increase to LOE benefits will make a meaningful difference for many injured workers. The mandatory coverage of for-profit residential care facilities and group homes extends workers’ compensation coverage to approximately 29,000 workers who need it. And giving the WSIB discretion to extend LOE benefits beyond age 65 will enable it to address some cases where older workers would have otherwise been unfairly cut-off.

But these are half-measures. In particular:

• The 5% increase in LOE benefits is only prospective and does nothing to address the 28-years of artificially low benefit rates paid to injured workers.
• The extension of coverage still leaves over 2 million workers without WSIB coverage and does nothing to address the fundamentally flawed approach to coverage in Regulation 175/98 that leaves new industries presumptively uncovered.
• The WSIB’s power to extend benefits past age 65 is limited and does not adequately address the realities that Ontario workers are retiring older.

Unfortunately, these half-measures are accompanied by drastic changes that are detrimental to injured workers. Eliminating the lock-in would hurt the workers who have suffered the most severe and life-changing injuries. Imposing a cap on total income would unfairly penalize injured workers for accessing public and private pensions and participating in government programs unrelated to their disability or to employment.

OPSEU/SEFPO provides these submissions on Schedule 9 of Bill 105 with a view to making the most of this opportunity to make Ontario’s workers’ compensation system stronger and fairer. Thank you kindly for considering our recommendations.

Footnotes

¹ Harry Arthurs, Funding Fairness: A Report on Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance System (Toronto: Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, 2012) at p. 19-20.

²Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, News Release, “WSIB to rebate up to $1.5 billion in surplus funds to Ontario businesses” (16 February 2022), online; Ontario, News Release, “Ontario Returning Over $2.5 Billion to Workers and Businesses Through Fee Reductions and WSIB Rebates” (21 November 2024), online: Ontario Newsroom Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, News Release, “WSIB returns another $2 billion in surplus funds to eligible safe Ontario businesses” (3 November 2025), online.

³ Data taken from Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, “Safety Check: Provincial Downloads” (last modified 4 December 2025), online: WSIB [Dataset: WSIB Covered Employment by Class].

⁴ Ontario, Media Briefing, “Protecting Ontario’s Workers and Economic Resilience Act, 2026” (20 April 2026), online: Ontario Newsroom.

⁵ Statistics Canada, “Retirement age by class of worker, annual,” Table 14-10-0060-01 (last modified 14 May 2026), online: Statistics Canada.

⁶ Statistics Canada, “Labour force characteristics by gender and detailed age group, annual,” Table 14-10-0327-01 (last modified 14 May 2026), online: Statistics Canada.