GERALDS BLOG October 14, 2016
The links I provided are very important links which questions how WCB Medical Advisors who are employed by the “Board” or receive significant amounts of money from the “Board” to provide an opinion and why Adjudicators and especially the Appeals Commission would determine that their opinion is more compelling than a workers primary care physician or independent medical specialist. Why it has taken the courts in Canada this long to realize that when a medical practitioner is being paid by an individual or body, that the evidence they provide is biased and in the workers compensation system, most if not all of WCB medical advisors provide damaging medical evidence that is used to deny claims and benefits. In the case sited as Daggitt v. Campbell, read para. 26-32 as to the reasons when expert medical testimony will not be accepted. Click on the link “2015 SCC 23 (canlii) which refers to a case cited as “White, Burgess, Langille, Inman and then follow the case back to the courts in Nova Scotia to understand why the courts no longer will accept testimony from defense experts when it is evident that their opinions are biased. It seems that the courts in Alberta are painfully slow to understand how corrupt the system is when nearly all claims involve WCB doctors whose medical opinions are biased, false and incorrect, yet these medical opinions are determined to be more compelling than a worker’s primary care doctor and other supporting specialists. Based on precedence, at no time when a WCB Medical Advisor provides a contrary medical opinion should this medical opinion be considered unless the medical opinion favors a worker which in most if not all cases, a WCB Medical Advisor will always provide a biased medical opinion. In my opinion all doctors involved in a claim must be named by the Appeals Commission on Canlii so their opinions can be tracked as to how may times their opinion was used to deny a claim or benefits.
A Case Manager by the name of Francine Taylor-Gobeil advised me a number of years ago that all WCB Adjudicators are told by senior managers that they are not to consider any medical evidence from independent doctors and must only consider the medical evidence from WCB Medical Advisors. In order to have the WCB Medical Advisor’s medical opinion contradicted I had to file a human rights complaint which resulted in the WCB Medical Advisor’s medical opinion being admitted by WCB Medical Services and WCB Legal Services as being incorrect. It took me 7 years to have them make this admission. Even this did me no good as after all of this, I requested a reconsideration by the Appeals Commission and it was denied because according to the Appeals Commission with due diligence I could have or should have been able to provide this information at the first in person appeals commission hearing.
Click on the following links; https://releve.canlii.org/en/
From my understanding you are the Minister in charge of WCB and also responsible for the WCA. Section 157.1 of the WCA. Question is what is the point of having this legislation when the Alberta Government has not appointed a review body to review long standing contentious claims. After it was determined by Justice Friedman et al, it was determined that there was a culture of denial and that the appeals process did not work. The Alberta Government did appoint if my memory is correct a dozen members to this review board and their names were posted on the Internet although that information has mysteriously disappeared.
WCB and the Alberta Chamber of Commerce did in fact lobby the Government (letter to Klein) to rescind the legislation and to terminate the people selected to the Review body for obvious reasons that it would open up a Pandora’s box that would undoubtedly find that Justice Friedman was correct and that millions of dollars would have to be paid back to workers for the illegal denying of claims and benefits. I suspect that certain members of the Conservative Government were paid by WCB to not proceed with reviewing long standing contentious claims and is the reason why the Review body members were terminated.
I can assure you that if these long standing contentious claims had bee reviewed by honest people rather than the DRDRB and the Appeals Commission, Justice Friedman’s determination of a culture of denial would be supported. Justice Friedman’s report was based on individual claims rather than the newly appointed WCB Review Panel who have foolishly stated that they would not use individual claims in their review. In order to understand what the problems are, you have to review individual files, preferably long standing contentious claims. Without me reviewing long standing contentious claims I would be as ignorant as yourself, your colleagues, the public, the legal system and members of the legislature. Obviously, a person has to walk in the shoes of a worker to understand the problems workers face with either corrupt Case Managers, corrupt DRDRB members and corrupt Appeals Commissioners or that the selection process is flawed and the people adjudicating claims are just simply ignorant and incompetent. The system is supposed to assist workers not cause them to commit suicide, having homicidal thoughts of killing WCB employees and Appeals Commissioners, driving workers into depression or causing families to lose their homes and then having tax payers foot the bill to support workers and their families.
Gerald