By Gerald
This is an article written by Peter Rousmaniere who is a well known journalist and expert on workers compensation. I attended a webinar on Thursday March 7, 2019 at 10:00 AM hosted by experts in the area of workers compensation. The subject of using impairment ratings as a direct method of rating disability was discussed and the conclusion was that it has caused major financial problems for workers when determining disability which is why I went to court as this is a violation of a workers right to be compensated for a loss of earnings, not for the difficulty a worker would have performing basic activities of daily living which has got nothing to do with a loss of earnings.
Basically, the blame for all of this as determined by the Court of Queens Bench and supported by legal counsel on Feb. 20, 2019 was the fault of the WCB BOD who enacted the policy equating an impairment to a disability, thereby defrauding workers from receiving the loss of earnings they were entitled to. After the Penny decision, the Conservative Government should have directed that all claims prior to Jan 1, 1995 be re-adjudicated and workers life time pensions that were determined based on impairment ratings be re-calculated. It is obvious that the Conservative Government aided and abetted the Alberta WCB to defraud workers by failing to comply with the WCA as determined by the Alberta Court of Queens Bench and the Alberta Court of Appeal in the Penny case. Rather than to re-adjudicate all claims prior to Jan 1, 1995, the Alberta WCB BOD simply changed their policy to enact a dual awards policy that separated an impairment rating from a disability rating by using impairment ratings to determine a NELP and an ELP to determine an earning loss.
It will be worthwhile for people to see how the Office of the Ombudsman will handle my complaint in regard to this matter. Will they sacrifice or kill the sacred cow or will they recommend that the Government re-adjudicate all claims prior to Jan 1, 1995 and pay workers what they are entitled to or will the Office of the Ombudsman simply attempt to coverall of this up just as the Conservative Government did after the Penny decision. None of this was an honest mistake as the Government and the WCB BOD knew what they done was wrong as witnessed by the fact that after the Penny decision, they separated impairment ratings from loss of earnings and went to a dual award system but failed to pay workers what they were entitled to prior to Jan 1, 1995.
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