HALIFAX, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2004
STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Ronald Chisholm
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, everyone. To start off this morning, I would like to welcome the Workers' Compensation Board representatives to our meeting of the Human Resources Committee. With us we have Mr. Louis Comeau, Chairman of the Board of Directors; Ms. Nancy MacCready-Williams, Vice-President of Client Services; and Mr. Stuart MacLean, Acting Chief Executive Officer. We also have some staff, I believe, from the Workers' Compensation Board who are in the audience. There are a number of people in the audience, a lot of observers this morning. We welcome those people as well.
For those of you who have not attended a standing committee before, I will give you a brief outline as to how it works. The Workers' Compensation Board, who are our witnesses this morning, will make a presentation. After that presentation, members of the committee will have the opportunity to ask questions of the witnesses and I believe we will go with probably 10 minutes to 12 minutes to start off with each caucus. This is a public meeting but I must remind the observers that it is not a public forum. We have only two hours to go through this meeting so we will get started but before I do, I will ask the members of our committee to introduce themselves, starting with Mr. Corbett.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, everyone. I guess, Mr. Comeau, we could start with your presentation.
MR. LOUIS COMEAU: Good morning and thank you for inviting us to appear before the committee. As you have already introduced these two people, there are other vice-presidents behind me: Leo McKenna - raise your hand, Leo - is VP of Finance; Shelley Rowan, now Acting VP of Prevention; and then you have Jim Houston who is really looking after the planning and all of the policy developments, et cetera.
1
We also have board members - I am glad to see them here today - Jim White and Elwood Dillman, both from the Valley area; Charlene Long from the Antigonish area; Betty Jean Sutherland; Jim Neville from Cape Breton is here; and Jim Melvin is here too. So those are board members who are here and of course we have all groups represented here from the three stakeholder groups.
When I was asked to chair the Workers' Compensation Board, there were several issues of concern: employers pay the second highest rates in the country; injured workers receive the second lowest benefits in Canada; the Workers' Compensation Board had an unfunded liability of $286 million; the Auditor General wanted a tightening of governance functions; and the Dorsey report said that the system - which includes not only ourselves but includes the Workers' Advisers Program, the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal, and the Occupational Health and Safety Division - was overly complex and too legalistic. So you wonder why I took on this job but anyway, it is not as bad as it sounds and I'm going to tell you why. We have given you a package which gives you some details on some of these things.
In my view, we needed to develop a new working model for the compensation system, a new culture that involves consultation; consultation with our stakeholders and a new focus on safety and prevention. That is what we are trying to do. At the time I was appointed, government asked if I would lead a consultation process with our stakeholders to develop a strategic plan for the system which includes the OH&S, WAP and WCAT, and to make recommendations on benefit and coverage changes arising from the Dorsey report. As you may know, the Dorsey committee conducted a major review of the system. It went around for a year and a half and really went on for almost two years.
The report made 41 recommendations for improvements, including $250 million of additional benefits. From the beginning, because this was just reported when I became chairman, I said, as chairman, and the board said that the WCB agrees that the Dorsey recommendations, including the benefit enhancements, should be implemented over time. We were not going to redo all of that stuff; here was a major study, we were just going to take that as our Bible and go. This provided us with a road map on how to proceed.
Since that time, we and our partner agencies, WCAT and WAP and OH&S, have been working with the stakeholders to try to achieve a consensus on the priorities for the system. As we heard in our consultations - and we did a lot of consultations in the last year and a half, the first time that has ever been done in such an aggressive manner, and as you also heard in the Law Amendments Committee process, our stakeholders have different views on what needs to be done.
We completed the strategic plan and made our recommendations to government in September, a brief form of the document entitled Building the Future, which is included in your package which you have already seen, it briefly outlined what we were about to do. A
few days later, of course, the Supreme Court decision on chronic pain came about. In response to the Supreme Court's decision and the Workers' Compensation Board's recommendations to Dorsey, government, of course, tabled Bill No. 20. We were asked to make recommendations to government on a new approach to chronic pain and we are in the process of doing just that. In the strategic plan, we committed, WCB, to consult stakeholders on all major issues and throughout December and January, we sought the workers' and employers' opinions on chronic pain.
As you know, the Law Amendments Committee had invited us to make a formal presentation for them in January. However, it was our conscious view - we had made this decision in December - that we should listen to the discussion at the Law Amendments Committee as part of the consultation process. Staff attended the Law Amendments Committee hearing and gave us a summary at the end of each day. About 40 presentations were made, as you know, and many of the workers who presented told the committee about experiences they had with WCB over many years and how they had been mistreated. We understand their issues and we agree, no question about it, that sometimes the service we provide isn't all that great, but we have taken many positive steps throughout the last few years to focus on these things.
Let me touch a little bit on performance. In the past 10 years, WCB has accepted about 350,000 claims and paid over $1 billion in benefits to workers or health care providers on their behalf. During that time, the financial situation has also improved. Today, the WCB is 73 per cent funded, compared to being only about 27 per cent in 1994. So there has been a lot of progress because the progress has also been that the average assessment rate has stayed stable at $2.54 per $100 of payroll during the 10-year period. So it is hard to maintain the rate and to improve the unfunded liability without affecting some way new benefits that you could introduce. So there have been some issues.
So we have made some significant service improvements as well. An important indicator of our overall performance is the result of employers' and injured workers' satisfaction surveys, which we have done on an ongoing basis for quite some time now. These surveys are conducted by Corporate Research Associates, which is an independent research firm, as you well know.
The 2003 results - some of which are on the boards behind you - you can have a look at them - show that three-quarters of injured workers were satisfied with their overall experience with WCB; that's up from 58 per cent in 1997. You could say, well it should be 100 per cent - it should be. Ninety-three per cent of injured workers and 85 per cent of employers said that we treat people with respect and we deal with them fairly. Well, again, maybe that should be higher but it's making a hell of a lot of improvement. Eighty-seven per cent of injured workers said that the WCB treats them well and about 70 per cent said that it was affordable.
The Corporate Research Associates said, "the WCB performs as well as, or better than, many private sector organizations . . .", and I think that is pretty well right. Other independent groups, including some international organizations, have recognized some of the work that has been done. For example, in 2000 the Treasury Board of Canada presented the WCB with an Award of Distinction for what we did in making our one-stop shopping available through the business registry. Last year an association, comprised of almost all the workers' compensation insurers and regulators in North America, we were awarded an Information Product Award by the whole of North America, to recognize our performance measurement and management system.
Over the past year the system has undergone extensive review. These independent reviewers have provided us with a good understanding of how the system is operating. The Auditor General in his last review said, "our review of the WCB claims indicates that overall, claims are being processed efficiently and in accordance with the Act."
The Dorsey committee, made up of workers and employers, led by workers' compensation experts, found that the WCB generally is doing a good job, particularly in the areas of classifying and assessing employers, and performance measurements and accountability. For example, the report states, "the Auditor General has informed this committee that the WCB is in the forefront of provincial government agencies in setting, measuring and reporting on performance.", and I think we are. We do a pretty good job of measuring our performance and are where we want to be. But we also found we needed improvements, there are other improvements, as well. The Dorsey committee also said - and I quote this to staff almost daily - the workers' compensation program is ". . . overly complex, highly technical, excessively legal, rigidly compartmentalized and poorly co-ordinated."
Like Dorsey, we recognized that the Workers' Compensation Act is complex, no question about it. The Act sets out a very date-driven benefit scheme that's difficult to understand, there's no doubt about that. The Legislature considered this in 1994 and 1995 when it debated moving to an earnings-loss system, so you recognized this, but this is the Act and we respond to the Act.
[9:15 a.m.]
The select committee and the Dorsey committee also heard similar complaints about date-driven benefits from injured workers when they held hearings across the province and we heard it as part of our consultation program. Unfortunately, no easy solution to this problem has been identified by any of these groups and we will continue to grapple with this situation. I will also point out that virtually all Canadian jurisdictions maintain dual-benefit schemes as a result of one time in the 1980s, having switched to earnings-loss systems. So you had a system prior to the 1990s in this province and one after 1990, where we switched to an earnings-loss system.
We have taken steps to make the system less complex in other areas, however. We've introduced the Assessment Payment Plan; all of the WCB's payroll reporting rules are now harmonized with the Canada Revenue Agency, CCRA.
Bill No. 20 contains a number of other changes that we recommend to further reduce complexity on the assessment side of the business. For example, we recommend eliminating the lengthy inclusion list from the Act and replacing it with a shorter, clearer list of excluded industries so employers can more easily determine whether they are required to have workers' compensation coverage or not. Eliminating the three-worker rule and the counting discrepancy between sole proprietors, partners and active directors, it's very complicated but all of that will also make the system easier to understand. In addition, these changes will provide more coverage for workers and employers. As you know, we only cover 67 per cent to 68 per cent of our workers.
Dorsey also said that the appeals system is too legalistic; we agree. In partnership with stakeholders and other agencies like WAP, WCAT and OH&S, we have identified a number of initiatives in the strategic plan that we will undertake over the next five years to simplify the system. The system is not only us, the system is ourselves, WAP, WCAT and OH&S, and we don't have control over those other agencies. We have established a joint working group comprised of these agencies to identify and implement new ways of resolving the claims-related issues earlier and make them less formal; we have to have a better system that works.
I would like to talk a little bit about prevention. In addition to addressing the issues of complexity, stakeholders identified other key priorities for the system. They clearly identified that the social and economic costs associated with workplace injuries need greater focus in our society. The strategic plan reflects the compelling case made by workers, employers and safety representatives for the creation of a system-wide prevention program. The board is committed to creating a safety workplace culture in Nova Scotia. We have not been given that authority in the past, we have it now, and we are committed to creating a safety workplace culture in Nova Scotia.
In 2004, our total budget was about $260 million. We intend to spend - some people say it's too much, we say it's not a hell of a lot of money if it creates a new safety culture - $3.6 million on changing the safety culture in this province and beginning to put in place specific programs to help reduce workplace injuries. We are quite committed to this and I, personally, am very committed to this. I know it can be done, we've done it with other agencies I have dealt with; when companies and people decide that they can do something about safety, you can, and we are going to try to be there. We are going to do that by undertaking a social marketing campaign to raise safety awareness; we're going to investigate proactive rate incentives to promote positive safety behaviours; we're going to investigate disincentives for employers, including auditing programs; we're going to build a program to allow employers to access information, including accident information on-line;
and we're looking at developing a core safety training curriculum that includes education for young workers.
In concert with the development of the strategic plan, we also asked workers and employers for their input on how to implement the Dorsey recommendations. As indicated in that document, Building the Future, after considering all the views, we made a series of recommendations to government in September for changes to the benefits and coverages to be implemented in the short term.
The recommendations included what we saw as an emerging stakeholder consensus on issues. It says increasing the indexing of benefits. We said, this year, to 55 per cent. We realize that the Dorsey report says much higher than that. We intend to do that on a gradual basis as we can develop and make more funds available - we don't make funds available, the stakeholders make funds available. The other issues were increasing the maximum assessable/insurable earnings, and repealing the three-worker rule. We did this as well, and prior to all of this we made recommendations to enhance, by $20 million, the supplementary benefits program for employees, principally injured workers injured prior to 1990. These people, no question, their benefits are not large. It was recognized that over time - every year we would review this - we would virtually implement all of the Dorsey recommendations.
Now, on top of that, of course, the Supreme Court of Canada, the chronic pain decision was rendered shortly after we made our recommendations. Some stakeholders at the Law Amendments Committee expressed the view that the Dorsey package should be reconsidered in light of the financial implications of chronic pain. Well at the end, what we put together on Dorsey is basically revenue neutral. We don't think that we should put those things aside - chronic pain - we think all of these things have to go forward somehow or other. Again, that's our view. I would point out that we're not a profit-making organization here. We have to do what stakeholders want us to do.
Let me talk a little bit about governance. I've been a member of several boards of directors in my career, in the last 35 years or so, both private-industry and stakeholder-representative boards. I have certainly studied the issue of governance, and I have attended various governance conferences over the past 10 years. The board of directors, as you well know, is responsible for the governance of the Workers' Compensation Board. It oversees the delivery of programs, develops policies in accordance with the Act and develops legislative proposals for government to consider.
Currently we have a stakeholder board made up of employers, labour and public-at-large representatives. Some board members represent different points of view, as you well know, at the table. We have always had an injured worker on the board as in the last 10 years anyway. The public-at-large members, some people say well, they're not very useful, they don't vote, and all of that stuff. Well, they play quite an active role. For example, they are often able to help bring consensus to decisions because they're neutral, they represent the
public at large. They've always been very useful. They also share committees. In our governance manual, which we have developed and which is in your package, is something that not too many agencies in Canada - we've developed that in the past year to define, precisely, what the board should do. They play an active role in chairing the committees.
So the board of directors is not perfect, but it's working well. We finalized a governance manual recently, but beyond the governance manual, our governance structure, we also have an OH&S Advisory Council. We have made it formal that the OH&S Advisory Council, rather than us setting up another safety prevention committee, we are asking the OH&S Advisory Council to advise us on prevention policies and programs. That's working. We are currently developing a formal - when I say formal, I mean it will be part of our structure - consultation process. It's not something that will be on and off, we will do it. We will try to do it. It's all part of governance.
The board of directors will focus on governance issues and not management of the WCB. We also have the chief executive officer who is responsible to oversee the management of the operations. As you are likely aware, we are currently recruiting for a new CEO. Again, this is part of refocusing the WCB for the future, with a new prevention mandate and a consultative approach.
Let me leave you with one final thought - we often hear that things are terrible and all of that stuff - the WCB is a good insurance program for workers, and I commend those who want to get into it. It is also tremendously good for employers as it protects employers from lawsuits from workplace accidents. A lot of small employers are not aware of that, and it's our job, over the next little while, to really push that forward and to increase the coverage that we now have. Anyway, that's enough. I will ask Nancy to make a few remarks, and then we will go on to questions.
MS. NANCY MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: As you are aware, in October 2003, the Supreme Court of Canada found that Section 10B and the functional restoration program regulations are unconstitutional. Broadly, the question before the court was whether injured workers should be considered for long-term compensation for chronic pain. The court provided two key messages when responding to this particular question. The first is, injured workers with chronic pain must have access, the same access, to the workers' compensation system as other injured workers. The second important point of the decision was that an individual assessment should be conducted to determine the appropriate benefits and services each worker should receive, and to determine their eligibility for long-term compensation.
In mid-October, the government tabled Bill No. 20 in response to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision, as well as in response to the recommendations made by the board of directors on the Dorsey report. As part of the process of Bill No. 20 becoming law, the Minister of Environment and Labour asked our board of directors to make a recommendation for a new approach, a new framework for compensation in relation to chronic pain for the
government's consideration. As the chair has said, the Workers' Compensation Board has committed to consult stakeholders on all major issues, and throughout December of last year and this past January, we've sought our stakeholders' opinions on a new framework, a new approach to compensate for chronic pain.
We posted a discussion paper on chronic pain on our Web site, and we mailed that to key stakeholders and asked for their opinion on a couple of questions. The paper itself proposed three options for an assessment tool that the Workers' Compensation Board could use to assess injured workers with chronic pain and to determine the eligibility for benefits and services in relation to that chronic pain.
We asked these stakeholders to comment on these options, and we proposed three specific questions. We asked them, what are the alternatives for this high-level framework for chronic pain, in other words, do you prefer a legislative framework, a regulatory framework or a policy framework, or some combination of all three? We asked for their opinion on the options that we presented in the discussion paper for an assessment tool for chronic pain. And we asked them whether there was a particular option that they could not possibly support, and why they felt that. The third question we asked was, are there any options for responding to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision that we haven't thought of, and if so, could they describe those and we could talk about those.
We then held two days of focus consultation, one day before Christmas and one day in January, with key opinion leaders representative of injured workers' groups, labour organizations and employer groups. Over a two-month period, we received about 50 submissions in response to the discussion paper posted on the Web site, we had the two days of intensive consultation with the key opinion leaders, and we listened to what was said to the Law Amendments Committee through the law amendments process, and, again, we heard approximately 40 people make those presentations.
Throughout that extensive consultation process, we received very insightful information on stakeholders' views on the chronic pain issue. I will share some of those with you, some of those highlights. Generally, there's a sense that Section 10B and the functional restoration programs should be repealed and struck down as discriminatory. Stakeholders agreed that there likely should be a high-level framework for compensation for chronic pain reflected in the legislation. However, there was some division of opinion as to whether the rules, themselves, the specific program rules should be captured in regulation or in policies by our board of directors.
[9:30 a.m.]
All stakeholders agreed that the cost of the benefit program for chronic pain should not be the primary factor in determining what is the most appropriate approach for moving forward. However, I must state that some employers expressed concern about the cost of
providing chronic pain benefits and the impact that a significant rate increase could have on the economy of Nova Scotia.
Injured workers' groups said they preferred the Marked Life Disruption Assessment tool, one of the three options that the board of directors put forward in their discussion paper. Some employers felt ill-equipped to provide a comment on the appropriate tool to use and they felt the question was better answered by the Workers' Compensation Board and the medical community.
In terms of the cost of moving forward, I should point out that the Workers' Compensation Board has limited experience on which to base their estimates for the cost of providing long-term benefits for chronic pain. Accordingly, we have stated throughout the consultation process that we have low to moderate confidence in the figures that have been quoted. In consultation with an independent actuary, the Workers' Compensation Board estimates that providing chronic pain benefits will result in a $220 million to $350 million increase to our benefits liability, as well as an approximate $11 million increase in annual claim costs. The Workers' Compensation Board intends to consider the question of funding chronic pain benefits over time as actual cost becomes known.
In addition to all of the input that we've heard from the consultation process, we have also researched how other Canadian jurisdictions compensate for chronic pain and we have sought advice from an internationally recognized, chronic pain expert. After considering all of this information, the board of directors is finalizing its recommendation and it should be ready to go to government shortly. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will turn the floor over for questions and will start with the NDP caucus.
Mr. Corbett.
MR. FRANK CORBETT: Mr. Comeau, in light of the federal decision, can you explain to me - previous to the decision - what the Workers' Compensation Board had done to prepare in the event you would lose the case in the federal court? What contingency plans were made within the board?
MR. COMEAU: Nancy, do you want to deal with that?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes. We had essentially an operational and communications plan in place and a team designated to consider the decision when it came. Again, we weren't sure exactly when we would receive the decision; the hearing was held in December 2002, and we ultimately received the decision in October 2003. There were some sort of high-level estimates - in the absence of truly understanding what the Supreme Court would say about the regulations or the legislation - about what potential costs might
look like and what a program might look like, again, in the absence of the Supreme Court of Canada's clarity on that.
So we had a team ready to go and a communications strategy ready, in terms of analyzing the decision and responding to enquiries that we knew we would receive, upon receipt of the decision, and an understanding, again, very generally, what we might be looking at, in terms of overall costs, of a program moving forward.
MR. CORBETT: Even today you are giving this committee ballpark figures. I appreciate the October 3rd deadline but I guess what I'm more worried about is from hearing date to decision date, it seems like - well, I think we're going to win this. That group doesn't seem to be, at least, visually mobilized by people outside of your group. There was nobody crunching numbers, so to speak at that time that could have brought us closer to real numbers today? It was just put in abeyance?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: It's not that we weren't busy preparing for the decision because as I indicated, we were. The reason why, as I stated, we have low to medium confidence in the numbers is because the Workers' Compensation Board has limited experience in compensating injured workers for chronic pain on a long-term basis. The only experience we have is with respect to Section 10E of the legislation and that's a long-term benefit that's paid to certain injured workers, injured between 1990 and 1996. Because that's our only experience in providing long-term compensation for chronic pain, we're only able to say that we have low to moderate confidence in the numbers, and our actuary has supported the board's position in that regard.
MR. CORBETT: I guess one of the last things you stated was that you have been in discussion with experts around chronic pain. I guess my question to you is, why didn't those discussions with experts take place pre-decision, so you could kind of hit the ground running if you lost this decision? It's almost like you sat there and bought lotto tickets hoping that if we lose this thing we might win the lotto and be able to pay these people. Why is it after the October 3rd decision that a lot of these things were done? Really, on the surface, it appears there was very little done to protect yourselves against a loss.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Again, we made certain assumptions about what the Supreme Court of Canada would say and we put in place a plan to address the possibility that the legislation and the regulations that the government put in place are unconstitutional. We are now four months post-decision and we have done extensive consultation with stakeholders on a new framework for chronic pain, and as I indicated, the board of directors is in a position very shortly to make a recommendation to government on an approach for moving forward, as the government has requested the board of directors to do.
We still have two months of the six-month window that the Supreme Court of Canada has given us and again, the government should receive that recommendation shortly.
MR. CORBETT: A month and a half, it's a short month. What role then did WCB have with the government in drafting Bill No. 20?
MR. COMEAU: In terms of the chronic pain issue, we didn't have a lot. In terms of the Dorsey we did, we submitted a report. But we intended - that's what we have been doing - and we really, honestly feel that there has to be some consultation on these issues and that is what we embarked upon.
MR. CORBETT: Which issues?
MR. COMEAU: All of these issues. Chronic pain was a new issue that came up in October and we felt that needed a consultation process.
MR. CORBETT: Why did you think it was necessary to stop those consultations during an election campaign?
MR. COMEAU: Stop the consultations? The chronic pain only came in in October.
MR. CORBETT: Not chronic pain, you just mentioned everything, so we're talking about Dorsey and this is a letter from the deputy chair, explaining about his report on August 6th. He said in here, "However, I had explained that if a provincial election was called, work on the stakeholder consultation process would be suspended until after the election." Why would that be?
MR. COMEAU: No particular reason, other than . . .
MR. CORBETT: Was there someone from Granville Street calling down to South Street?
MR. COMEAU: No, no, we just . . .
MR. CORBETT: Just thought I would ask. That's not the case at all?
MR. COMEAU: No.
MR. CORBETT: It's just a coincidence?
MR. COMEAU: No, basically it was clearly felt by the board of directors that we should not be - first of all we had done most of the consultations on Dorsey then, I mean they were pretty well complete and we just said we didn't want to get involved in the political process and that was basically it, rightly or wrongly.
MR. CORBETT: Rightly or wrongly, that's right. So the input you had on Bill No. 20 was made basically excluding the chronic pain portion of it because you hadn't had that picture figured out yet?
MR. COMEAU: Essentially, yes. We submitted a report, Building the Future, and that's what we wanted to try to implement. Then, of course, the chronic pain is another issue that came up.
MR. CORBETT: With Dorsey, how much of the non-legislative side of Dorsey has been implemented at the board? How many of the recommendations from Dorsey that wouldn't need legislative approval have been approved by the board?
MR. COMEAU: Could you comment on that, Nancy or Stuart? This is client services and assessment, so we have both of them right here.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There were a number of recommendations that didn't require legislative amendment or regulatory amendment. We have implemented a number of those. We've recently reported to our board of directors, in terms of the stage of implementation of those. Certainly the need to collect certain information about commutation of benefits, a lot of data collection issues that Mr. Dorsey had recommended and the committee had recommended, and consultation, so there is definitely a plan. Many of the administrative matters have, in fact, been fully implemented; however, many of the recommendations arising from the Dorsey report require either legislative or regulatory amendment, and those, in fact, have found their way into Bill No. 20.
MR. STUART MACLEAN: I think, in addition, one of the most important things that happened in the last year is we developed a workplace system strategic plan in coordination with the partners. One of the things that Dorsey said is the system needed to be more coordinated. We had agencies with different goals, different planning cycles and there wasn't a lot of talk going on between the agencies in terms of how do we collectively achieve the goals of the system.
What we did is, as a group, put together a coordinating committee, which is led by the heads of delegation of each of the different agencies. That coordinating committee came up with, through consultation and round tables, one-on-ones with the chair, a lot of consultation, with a mission, a vision, goals and objectives, and initiatives that are supportive of moving the agenda forward, in terms of what we're going to do to work together. So one of the key considerations was around the coordination. Certainly that's the first step that you need in any kind of a plan, you need to get together and decide, where are we going to go so that we all end up at the same place, and how can we make sure that we're all working together rather than working independently. So that was one of the key things that happened.
In addition, the strategic plan focused on prevention being moved from the OH&S to WCB. So that particular initiative, the strategic plan, was developed for that. We did that in consultation with our stakeholders. As Mr. Comeau said earlier, the advisory council played a key role in helping us sort of guide what the objectives, those types of things, would be. We believe we have a sound strategic plan, in terms of prevention, that we're implementing today, regardless of whether Dorsey gets done or not. So that's also a key initiative as well.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will now turn it over to the Liberal caucus.
MR. RUSSELL MACKINNON: My first question to Mr. Comeau is, who asked you to submit your name as chairman of the board? You indicated in your opening remarks that you were asked to submit your name.
MR. COMEAU: There had been some discussions with the former board members, David Stuewe and people like that. People asked, well, at some point in time, are you interested in this? I saw the ad in the paper, I applied, and maybe I shouldn't have.
MR. MACKINNON: Were they the only ones who asked you to apply? Were there any other individuals who asked you to apply?
MR. COMEAU: I have no idea.
MR. MACKINNON: You can't remember?
MR. COMEAU: I'm sorry, I don't.
MR. MACKINNON: You indicated Mr. Stuewe and other members of the board, was there anybody else?
MR. COMEAU: There had been talk for a couple of years that maybe there was something. There was a vacancy for a year and a half there. I know that David and a couple of members of the board, in very informal discussions, had asked, well, is this of interest to you?
MR. MACKINNON: But that wasn't my question. Were there any other individuals outside members of the board who approached you to put your name . . .
MR. COMEAU: No, nobody asked, nobody.
MR. MACKINNON: Ms. MacCready-Williams, you indicated that you had an independent do the actuarial. Can you indicate who that independent was?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, it's Morneau Sobeco.
MR. MACKINNON: In doing the actuarial, was there any estimate as to how much rates would increase?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There have been some estimates, in terms of if the unfunded liability was to be eliminated by 2014 . . .
[9:45 a.m.]
MR. MACKINNON: That's with the present plan.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, exactly. The present plan is that with assessment rates remaining stable at $2.57 per $100 of assessable payroll that the unfunded liability would be eliminated in the year 2014. With the, again, low to moderate confidence in the figures of adding $200 million to $350 million to the benefits liability as a result of chronic pain, that obviously will push - there are some high-level estimates about what impact that might have on the rate, if the unfunded was to stay eliminated at 2014, and that would be a 40 cent increase on the average assessment rate.
But again, there are a number of things that can affect the unfunded liability: claim volumes, investment income, return on investment. There are a number of things that can affect the cost structure.
MR. MACKINNON: How many small, single operations - what we sometimes refer to as mom-and-pop businesses - in Nova Scotia would be captured by the change of legislation that would require universality? Do you have any estimate?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Do you mean the elimination of the three-worker rule?
MR. MACKINNON: Yes.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes. Stu, would you like to comment?
MR. MACLEAN: I guess it's probably important to note the distinction between the elimination of the three-person rule and universal coverage. The three-person rule means basically taking away the rule that says you have to have three workers in a mandatory industry. A mandatory industry is defined currently by an appendix to the Act, Governor in Council has the appendix. Then universal coverage is obviously to bring in the other industries.
There are probably about 45,000 to 50,000 firms in the province currently for universal coverage. We had 18,000 firms registered, and our best estimates at this time say that an additional 11,000 firms would be mandatory for workers' compensation. Obviously, primarily these would be small companies.
MR. MACKINNON: Most of them would be, as I referred, small mom-and-pop businesses?
MR. MACLEAN: Three workers or less.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Comeau, you indicated the possibility of providing some exemptions to that rule with the change of the legislation. What, in relationship, is that statement made to - what was the context? Are you referring to banks, financial institutions . . .
MR. COMEAU: There are exemptions, too many exemptions now, that's what I was referring to. There are a lot of exemptions in the Act. We want to clarify that to say who is included rather than who is exempted - the other way around, sorry - in the sense we want to be able to make it clearer and to move it towards more universality. We did not recommend - rightly or wrongly, again, and it's something that there's a lot of debate around - that the professional associations, for example, the accountants and the lawyers, be part of the workers' compensation system. It could be; we did not recommend that. We had some meetings with them. Again, it's part of our consultation process. No question, we would like to move the coverage forward, if, again, the Legislature does that. One thing about this Workers' Compensation Board is that we do not control the product.
MR. MACKINNON: But the minister has asked the board to make recommendations on how it would pay for chronic pain, has he not?
MR. COMEAU: Yes. In fact we're having another board meeting in the next few days to, hopefully, finalize some suggestions we can make to the minister.
MR. MACKINNON: One of the issues we deal with at this committee is the issue of governance. On behalf of the board, can you safely state that all members of the board are satisfied with the present structure of the Workers' Compensation Board of Directors?
MR. COMEAU: Oh, I think so. We have had discussions around that. Yes, I would say that the board is working fairly well, and the discussion that we've had around the board table is that the stakeholder board as we know it is pretty representative. You could make some other changes, there were other ways to do it, but the present one seems to work.
MR. MACKINNON: So you are speaking on behalf of all representatives, both labour and industry?
MR. COMEAU: As far as I know.
MR. MACKINNON: It would be safe for me to ask, through you, Mr. Chairman, if the labour representatives here can clearly state for themselves as to whether they are satisfied with the present structure of the board?
MR. COMEAU: They can come over and take the mic.
MR. MACKINNON: Just so you will know, the premise on that is because on another committee I have heard numerous representations saying that labour was not satisfied with the present structure and I would like to hear first-hand.
MR. COMEAU: They haven't indicated it to me and through our corporate governance structure, they have not indicated that.
MR. MACKINNON: Sure.
MS. CHARLENE LONG: I'm Charlene Long and I've been asked by the other labour reps to speak on their behalf and we are absolutely satisfied that we represent both workers and injured workers in this province and we think we do it well.
MR. MACKINNON: I do too and personally, myself, Mr. Chairman, I'm quite satisfied with the progress the board has made; I mean there are some wrinkles. But one final question - do I have enough time for one more? With regard to the Dorsey report, on Page 8 of the report - and I will quote this paragraph with regard to actuarial - Mr. Dorsey states, "Unhappily, some data provided by the Workers' Compensation Board changed during the review. The changes confounded the committee and extended discussion. To the committee's chagrin, in one instance involving the number and profile of persons receiving supplementary benefits, the data changed significantly after the committee had paid for costing based on earlier data supplied by the board."
Upon reading that, I took it upon myself to call Mr. Dorsey in British Columbia and I was quite disturbed to find out my interpretation of my discussion with Mr. Dorsey was that he didn't feel he was getting the figures straight up from the board that he should have been. So my question is, how do you respond to this statement?
MR. COMEAU: I have done the same as you. I have called him a couple of times and asked what is it? There were several questions asked in relation to this. We have gone through that, through the numbers with the stakeholders. We have had a major presentation with the injured workers, the labour and the employers in our stakeholders' meeting. We have had a presentation on that to see if there were any issues that we didn't understand and we have talked to Dorsey and we are satisfied that the numbers are okay. But, Leo, do you want to - where is Leo? (Interruptions) Leo is Vice-President of Finance.
MR. LEO MCKENNA: We provided Mr. Dorsey and his committee colleagues with many pieces of information. As you know, they worked for about a year on this process and what he refers to there is one relatively small incident and his colleagues have told us that with the exception of that he was very happy with the information that was provided to him by the board. They found it to be comprehensive, concise, understandable and in this one instance there was a miscommunication that resulted in a loss of confidence in that one small area.
MR. MACKINNON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I will now turn it over to the PC caucus. Mr. Taylor.
MR. BROOKE TAYLOR: Thank you, Mr. Comeau, and your delegation for coming in this morning. I just had a couple of areas I would like to inquire about. One, Mr. Comeau, at the constituency level we frequently hear, as MLAs, from injured workers who feel that there is a certain amount of, if I might say, inconsistency perhaps in the medical system in that your family doctor will refer you to a specialist - I think you maybe know where I'm going by the way you're nodding your head. When that injured worker comes before the medical professional with the WCB, the finding is, in many cases, quite different from the finding of your family doctor and the specialist who you were referred to by that family doctor.
It creates a lot of headaches at the constituency level when, in fact, medical doctors are phoning the MLA and complaining, look, I'm just flabbergasted. This has happened to me on a number of occasions, Mr. Comeau. The family doctor will say look, I'm just dumbfounded as to how the specialist at the WCB was able to discern that the injured worker doesn't have this particular type of medical/physical problem, and I really appreciate that over the last 18 months that the stakeholders and system partners have been working to come up with a more, I guess, common strategy that I don't see or at least recognize that that type of concern is being addressed. Many times - and I have been told this by medical professionals - the same doctor who is going counter to the family doctor and the injured worker's specialist went to the same med school.
I have further been told by doctors that when, in fact, the report is adjudicated that the adjudicator rarely, if ever, will go counter to the WCB doctor or specialist's report. I had to throw that out because it is a concern at the constituency level and I am wondering, it may be difficult, in fact, for the board of directors and the CEO or the acting CEO to get a handle on but it's a big-time problem. I'm wondering, Mr. Comeau, if you have any thoughts on that.
MR. COMEAU: Well, sometimes it probably happens. It is a difficult situation. You should know, as well, there is nothing in all this for us, WCB. Whether the rate is $10 or whether it is $2, there are no more profits for people. So basically, it's a stakeholder-driven
thing. All I'm saying is that if we are being miserable, we are not being miserable for the sake of a profit-driven thing or any of that stuff, but maybe you could talk a little bit - all those people report to Nancy.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Adjudication of a workers' compensation claim is not easy business. There is often conflicting evidence on a file. The employers are entitled, under the legislation, to send an injured worker to a doctor of their choosing. An injured worker will seek medical advice from their own family physicians and perhaps be examined by treating specialists.
An adjudicator or case manager's job is a challenging one because there is often conflicting evidence and one of the things that we see most often on a claims file is medical evidence. Much like asking a number of lawyers for a legal opinion, you will often find competing opinions on the same issue and it is a caseworker's duty to weigh it all up, consider all of the evidence in its totality, and make a determination in accordance with the policies and the legislation. So it is very rarely black and white. There is a process in place, an appeal system in place, to help adjudicate where perhaps that weighing up hasn't been done in an appropriate manner. A certain number of injured workers and employers avail themselves of that appeal process.
As the chairman has indicated, the rules in workers' compensation are very complex and we have, in the past, had a situation where before the board adopted the use of the American Medical Association guidelines that not all treating specialists in the community felt bound by the same rules around evaluating permanent impairment as perhaps our internal board medical advisors. So conflicting evidence is common, let's say, on a workers' compensation file but it's not the doctors at the end of the day who make the decision. It's not the internal board medical advisers, it is the individual case manager who weighs all of the evidence, not just the medical evidence and certainly not just the opinion of our own internal medical adviser but everything including the report of accident, what the worker has said, what the employer said.
MR. TAYLOR: Well, Mr. Chairman, I'm still not sure as to whether or not I heard the board actually recognizes that there is a problem out there. I don't know what the scale is but certainly, at the constituency level, I feel it is a problem. As well, I have heard that the adjudicators rarely, if ever, when there is conflicting medical information - and I mean conflicting on the WCB specialist and the specialist for the injured worker - the information I receive, at least, is that the adjudicator used - Mr. Chairman, perhaps we could request some information along those lines, without naming names, of course - and that leads me to this poll that Corporate Research Associates carried out. Would you know how many people were actually polled and what was the margin of error?
[10:00 a.m.]
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, we poll injured workers - I'm sorry I can't remember the exact number that we poll - monthly, it's injured workers who have received service from us in the previous month and it is a representative sample, according to Corporate Research Associates. So it's a valid representative sample and in fact, we report quarterly on our performance, and customer satisfaction, both on the injured workers and employers side, is one of our corporate performance measures, and we report in our annual report on how our customers feel about the service they receive from us.
As indicated on the charts that have been put in place behind you on the board, from the representative sample of injured workers who received service from us in the previous month, in 2003 results rolled up, 87 per cent of those injured workers felt they were treated fairly. In weighing the medical evidence, there is a benefit of the doubt provision in the legislation that is required to be found in favour of injured workers. So if there are competing medical opinions and, in fact, the evidence is evenly balanced in favour of the injured worker, in favour of the employer's position, the tie goes to the runner, we find for the injured worker. According to our 2003 survey results, 87 per cent of injured workers we serviced feel that they have been dealt with fairly.
MR. COMEAU: There were 1,508 injured workers shown in the sample.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, could we have a copy of that? I saw the brief but I would like to have the specific questions that were requested, if it wasn't too cumbersome.
MR. COMEAU: You can have the whole thing, we will send it all.
MR. TAYLOR: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will now go to the NDP caucus again.
Mr. Deveaux.
MR. DEVEAUX: I just want to follow up on the point from Mr. Taylor, 1,500 or 1,300?
MR. COMEAU: It was 1,508.
MR. DEVEAUX: Of those, what number were actually people who were injured for more than 12 weeks and on the system?
MR. COMEAU: I don't know those details right offhand, but we could supply you with the details of how this . . .
MR. DEVEAUX: Well if it's indicative - from what Ms. MacCready-Williams has said - of the breakdown of representatives. So what percentage of the people who are in the system are there for more than 12 weeks? Can you tell me that?
MR. COMEAU: We can supply you with that.
MR. DEVEAUX: You don't have an answer to that today?
MR. COMEAU: I don't have an answer to it.
MR. DEVEAUX: What percentage of the clients are in the system for 12 weeks or more?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Generally, about 84 per cent or 85 per cent of injured workers are back to work in less than a month. Approximately 7 per cent to 8 per cent are back to work within sort of a three to four month window. Then we have a population of workers most severely injured who require a much longer healing period, and then we have a small percentage, about 4 per cent of the total injured worker population, who are unable to return to work as a result of their serious work-related injuries, and go on to be serviced by our Extended Benefits Unit.
MR. DEVEAUX: So you would say the survey you did reflects those numbers?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, that's right. In fact we separate the extended benefits population and survey them as their own population, as well.
MR. DEVEAUX: Are they part of this, what you see back here?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes.
MR. DEVEAUX: So 84 per cent of the people that you have as clients usually go back to work within a month?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: That's right.
MR. DEVEAUX: And I think we could say that they're probably most of the 87 per cent who are pretty happy with the system?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: If I understand the methodology correctly, there is a representative sample from them. What we are talking about here, the 80-some odd per cent who go back to work fairly quickly require very little assistance from the Workers' Compensation Board, in fact, many of those don't have any time lost from work at all.
What we're talking about here are injured workers who receive a benefit cheque from us, they require to be off work as a result of their injuries. That's the population that you see the charts behind you on, those people who have time loss injuries, which is roughly between 8,800 and 9,000 claims a year.
MR. DEVEAUX: Who are the employer representatives on the board and which organizations do they represent?
MR. COMEAU: Do we have a list? The employer representative, Elwood Dillman is classified, I guess, as an employer representative.
MR. DEVEAUX: Who does he represent?
MR. COMEAU: I'm not sure who he represents, I think, recommended by CM&E. I'm not aware of all those things, quite frankly, but Jim Melvin and I don't know again, if he represents any organization or recommended by any organization or not.
MR. DEVEAUX: What's his profession, what does he work at?
MR. COMEAU: He's an accountant.
MR. DEVEAUX: Are accountants covered by this Workers' Compensation Act?
MR. COMEAU: No.
MR. DEVEAUX: Who is the third person?
MR. COMEAU: Then we have Gary Dean, who is with the Construction Association.
MR. DEVEAUX: And they are covered?
MR. COMEAU: Yes.
MR. DEVEAUX: How do you make decisions at the board, do you have votes or is it a consensus, how do you do it?
MR. COMEAU: Mostly by consensus. If there's no consensus on things we really review it again.
MR. DEVEAUX: And who would you say the Workers' Compensation Board is accountable to?
MR. COMEAU: It's spelled out in the Act. Aren't we responsible to the Minister of Labour?
MR. DEVEAUX: Would you say you are responsible to the stakeholders?
MR. COMEAU: Well, the stakeholders form part of the board, there's no question about it but in the Act, legally, we are appointed by government. It is a stakeholder board that has to really reflect what goes out there.
MR. DEVEAUX: It should reflect the people who are paying their money into the board.
MR. COMEAU: Absolutely.
MR. DEVEAUX: I have heard this from both employer and employee organizations, they asked the people on the board representing them what is going on and they get an answer that is fairly consistent which is, it's confidential, we're not allowed to talk about it. I'm concerned that there's not a lot of consultation. You have people in a room who are there to make decisions as stakeholder representatives, yet they're telling the people who they are supposed to be representing that they're not allowed to talk about it because it is supposed to be confidential. Beyond what is going on in the room at the Workers' Compensation Board, there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion with the stakeholders who are supposed to be part of that consensus that's being developed. I guess I'm hoping you might be able to explain to me how that happens?
MR. COMEAU: I'm not following you too much, I think our minutes are public and the material we discussed is public. I don't know what board members say to other people when they're asked questions, there's no reason for us to hide . . .
MR. DEVEAUX: Is there certain information that they're encouraged not to provide?
MR. COMEAU: There is no reason for us to hide anything.
MR. DEVEAUX: There is no confidentiality on any information that is provided to them?
MR. COMEAU: I don't recall a lot of documents that are marked "confidential", I can't even think of one.
MR. DEVEAUX: Whether they're marked, are they told that there are certain things that are confidential?
MR. COMEAU: Not by me.
MR. DEVEAUX: By others on the board?
MR. COMEAU: Not that I know. Sometimes you are in discussions on things and there might be periods where they want to listen rather than . . .
MR. DEVEAUX: What does that mean? What do you mean by that?
MR. COMEAU: I don't know. What I'm saying by that is there might be periods in a discussion - right now, for example, we're looking at chronic pain. A board member might discuss some of the things that we're discussing but is not able to give a position on it because they don't know, we haven't arrived at a position on it.
MR. DEVEAUX: Right, but shouldn't they be going back to the stakeholders and talking to them?
MR. COMEAU: Yes, and I hope they do.
MR. DEVEAUX: Are they encouraged to do that?
MR. COMEAU: Absolutely. That's what it is all about, and not only that, this is why this consultation process should be part of our governance structure, so that we do include a lot more of the stakeholders, the interest. The same thing, why we formalized the thing with the OH&S, the Safety Council.
MR. DEVEAUX: What consultations are entrenched in Bill No. 20, if Bill No. 20 is passed as it is? What does it say we need to do with regard to consultation?
MR. COMEAU: I'm not sure whether it's spelled out in there.
MR. DEVEAUX: I think it says there's one public or two public meetings a year. Is that right?
MR. COMEAU: There's an annual meeting.
MR. DEVEAUX: Do you consider that proper consultation?
MR. COMEAU: No, absolutely not.
MR. DEVEAUX: So why don't we put more in Bill No. 20.
MR. COMEAU: You could, absolutely you could.
MR. DEVEAUX: Would you agree that there should be more consultation entrenched in Bill No. 20?
MR. COMEAU: Absolutely. We are formalizing a consultation process, no question about it. In fact, in May we're having an annual meeting. Part of that process, we will be discussing with our stakeholders, we will invite our stakeholders, one of the issues is, what is it we consult on, do we consult on everything, or how big an issue does it have to be, if big is the right word, that kind of stuff. You have to appreciate that this has never been done here before. It's frustrating. The people who participate in it are very frustrated, because they come to the meetings, they say something, and then they go back and say, well, I said this and you didn't say it.
MR. DEVEAUX: I want to bring that up for a second, if you don't mind.
MR. COMEAU: It's quite an issue.
MR. DEVEAUX: You did some consultation back in the Fall, before. What I've heard from employers, injured workers and organized labour is that they seem to have had a consensus in the room, but when they left, what the board was saying was the consensus was something completely different. I guess I'm trying to understand how there is a lack of communication there.
MR. COMEAU: Well, there's no reason for us to be different than the consultation process, at all. There is no reason. That's why we consult. I was very frustrated the last time we had a consultation process. In fact I told them so, all the people who were there, 50 people or so. I said, this is getting dumb, what's going on here? We have a consultation process, it's not going anywhere. Well, it's difficult sometimes because it's a new process, and I hope that within the next year or two, sooner if possible, that they will view that process and say, that's where we put our input, that's where we help workers' compensation do things. But right now, they're still going - every group - back to government and everywhere, and that's fine, but we have to arrive at a process whereby the thing works. There's no reason why it shouldn't work.
MR. DEVEAUX: I have just one last question before my time is up. What's the board's position with regard to 10E cases? Should they also be covered under the new chronic pain policy?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, the board has considered that 10E is at risk of a constitutional challenge. It wasn't considered by the Supreme Court of Canada, because an injured worker with an injury date between 1990 and 1996 was not the subject of an appeal. So the Supreme Court of Canada did not consider the constitutionality of 10E, but we have looked at the decision and we think we're at risk. So the funding estimates that we've given presume that workers injured in the window period, including the Section 10E
population and those who didn't satisfy the criteria of 10E, would be considered for chronic pain compensation.
MR. DEVEAUX: Does that mean at the 100 per cent, or at the 50 per cent that they're at now, or would it increase, or . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: An assumption made in the costing is that there's no apportionment.
MR. DEVEAUX: So 100 per cent, whatever . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, if in fact there is an entitlement at the end of the day, depending on whatever the high level rules are for chronic pain.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will now go to the Liberal caucus.
MR. MACKINNON: Mr. Chairman, on a point of order. With regard to the comments from the previous speaker, making reference to the accountant on the board, I think that if we check the records at the Human Resources Committee there was little opposition from the NDP when that appointment was made, and to come back and try to cast aspersions afterwards is a little unfair.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colwell.
MR. KEITH COLWELL: I have a couple of questions. The first one is, why is David Stuewe's signature still on the cheques being paid to injured workers?
MR. COMEAU: I don't think it is.
MR. COLWELL: It is. I have a copy of a cheque.
MR. COMEAU: Not recently it isn't.
MR. COLWELL: Yes, as of January.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: It was. The company who does the new cheque development made a typographical error. Right now the cheques represent two signatures, until a new corporate chief executive officer is found. It's my signature as Vice-President of Client Services, and Leo McKenna as Chief Financial Officer. So that wasn't by design. It was, unfortunately, that the printer had a problem with the signature block.
MR. COLWELL: It just seems like poor management when that happens, when there has been such an issue over Mr. Stuewe's leaving the Workers' Compensation Board and his name was still on the cheques. It raised the issue, to me, is he still a signing officer with everything else at the Workers' Compensation Board?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: No, he's not.
[10:15 a.m.]
MR. COLWELL: Well, if he's not a signing officer anymore, how in the devil did anyone cash their cheques? In other words, all the cheques were . . .
MR. COMEAU: Leo, do you have something to say about that? I had the same questions as you, Mr. Colwell, exactly the same. I said, what the hell is this?
MR. MCKENNA: As Nancy suggested, when Mr. Stuewe left the organization, we took immediate steps to make sure that he was not a signing officer, whether it's with respect to the bank or the investment portfolio. We did notify the bank that his signature would appear on the cheques until such time as we got the plates changed. As Nancy said, we moved to change the plates relatively promptly, and unfortunately there is a process to get these things printed. There was a mistake made in the printing, they had to go back and be redone. As Mr. Comeau said, the proper signatures now appear on the cheques. We did advise the bank that Mr. Stuewe's name would continue to appear on the cheques, and we would let them know the day that that changed, and that cheques that were tendered to them up to that date would be fine and would be covered by the Workers' Compensation Board.
MR. COLWELL: That troubles me a bit. Here's someone, there was a big issue about his leaving the Workers' Compensation Board, and for whatever reason his name is still on cheques. I raise some pretty serious issues about that. It really goes back to not good planning or good whatever you want to call it within the board's management itself, not at the board level but at the management within the board. It's not acceptable; it's just simply not acceptable.
Then I'm going to ask Mr. Comeau a question. You indicated, when you were asked who asked you to join the board, it was Mr. Stuewe, wasn't that a bit of a conflict of interest . . .
MR. COMEAU: Sorry?
MR. COLWELL: When you were asked who asked you to join the board, you indicated at that time that Mr. Stuewe had been one of the people who asked you to consider . . .
MR. COMEAU: Asking is a big word. I'm just saying that there had been people who had indicated to me, why don't you, at some point in time, put your name in. Mr. Stuewe was one of them, that's all.
MR. COLWELL: That's sort of unusual, that a CEO who would really report to a board would ask somebody to join the board. It just seems a little bit strange to me, but sometimes those things are maybe done at the request of the board, who knows. I will assume that was the case in your case, Mr. Comeau.
MR. COMEAU: I can quit as easily as I came in. (Laughter)
MR. COLWELL: I don't think that's necessary. The other question I have, I've talked to injured workers, I've talked to employers and to organizations representing employers, and they both tell me exactly the same thing that was already raised, when they go to these consultation meetings, they come out of there, they think there is some kind of consensus on things that are going to move forward, and when the report comes out it looks like they weren't ever at the meeting. Nobody seems to know what happens in between. There seems to be a huge void where all this information disappears, and the board comes out with this new document that has nothing to do with what was discussed. That's consistently what I've heard from employee representatives, employers, people who have been at these meetings. Now, are these meetings recorded by a tape recorder, or is it just somebody from the Workers' Compensation Board taking notes, does it just vanish, what happens?
MR. COMEAU: Well, these meetings are part of a consultation process. There are Web sites, there is a whole bunch of other input into this thing. I find it regretful that we don't, according to some people, seem to agree with the same consensus. Often what you find, like in the last meeting that we had, I summarized at the end of the meeting, is this what we understand, this, this, this and this? Well, and we kind of agreed to that. Coming out of that, people say, well, we didn't - well, we summarize what goes on. It's a process that we will have to work our way through, Mr. Colwell, and we're just going to have to do it properly. I'm encouraged by the fact that we're at least doing it. As a matter of fact, Rick Clarke told me the other day, at this same meeting that we were consulting, I said this is getting very frustrating, we're not getting ahead as much as I would like. Everybody said, the fact that we're meeting is a positive thing.
So I'm assuming that over time, when we keep on - this is new, this is a new process - we will arrive at something very positive. It has to be done. That's one thing that's for sure, it has to be done.
MR. COLWELL: Well, I want to give the Workers' Compensation Board and the board itself really positive feedback on the fact that you're having these meetings. I think they're very positive and this is the sort of thing that should have been happening for a long time. The issue really is employers and workers who are there are all telling me the same
thing. I have not talked to anybody from either one of those stakeholder groups who says that the information that they finally get back when the report comes out is anything near what they talked about.
MR. COMEAU: Well, if that's the case, we will have to consult again.
MR. COLWELL: That sounds very positive.
MR. COMEAU: Really, we have to make this thing right.
MR. COLWELL: I was wondering, when they do these meetings which I have never had the opportunity to be at, which I would like to probably attend in the future at some time, as an observer, and I believe I should be there as an observer and not as a participant, because I think the workers and the employers and the board should really be the ones who are talking about this, because they're the stakeholders . . .
MR. COMEAU: Mark May 5th on your calendar, because it's going to be our annual meeting. It's an annual meeting where everybody is invited. We will have a day of consultation on the major issues coming forward.
MR. COLWELL: Thank you for the invitation to that. I will take you up on that one. When these meetings are done, are they taped?
MR. COMEAU: No, they're not taped.
MR. COLWELL: Maybe it should be suggested that if they were, the stakeholders could be given . . .
MR. COMEAU: Mr. Colwell, I think we just need to work our way through this stuff and make it right. It's a tough thing. Some of the injured workers' groups particularly, mostly they are very vocal at these meetings, and they should be, and some of them, particularly if you're injured prior to 1990, they're not getting a lot of benefits, and we understand all of that. But there is that system in place, the legislation says this is what happens and this is what happens after 1990. You often have, in those meetings, too, a lot of the employers who don't say a hell of a lot, they say it after the meeting is over or before the meeting or through all kinds of stuff. That's not the right process. We have to get the process working properly and over time, I hope we will.
MR. COLWELL: I have another question here, and this is sort of a generic question, one I have run into as an MLA. If a worker has a problem - now I don't mean with a ruling of the board, because there's a whole process to do that, right or wrong, the process is there - I have run into several people who have had what I would call inappropriate levels of service, just from the standpoint that if you go to a store and you're buying an item, and a person says
you don't need to buy it and they walk away and they don't really give you service. That type of service. How are those types of complaints handled, and how would they be properly handled if I was to go on behalf of . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There are two processes in place to deal with individuals who are unhappy with either the decision they've received or the service they've received. There is an appeals system in place, both internal and external and up to the courts, if you want to take it that far, and a Workers' Advisers Program, whose role it is to assist injured workers if they're unhappy with a decision that's in place. That's one aspect of addressing a wrong, if in fact a wrong has been committed.
Another process that we have in place is a client services officer and, in fact, a client relations officer, whose role is akin to an ombudsperson, who takes complaints and investigates those and reports to the board of directors on high level, obviously not claim-specific detail but how many complaints have been received, and if in fact they've been substantiated. So there is a complaints process that's in place, and there's also an appeal process that's in place.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will go to the PC caucus.
MR. CECIL O'DONNELL: Mr. Comeau, you're well aware that Shelburne County is made up of a lot of independent fishermen. I have been receiving calls expressing concerns about how much is chronic pain going to cost the fishermen. How do you respond to that?
MR. COMEAU: Difficult. It's going to be expensive, Mr. O'Donnell. We don't know exactly how many claims there will be. We are basing - if I'm correct here, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Nancy or Leo - our estimates on an average, I believe it's around 100 potential chronic painers that we will deal with per year. That's what we're looking at. In many other provinces - in Alberta, it's half a dozen; in certain other provinces it's 12 or something in that range. In certain provinces it might be higher, and certain provinces might tabulate them differently. We're being a bit cautious here in doing this, but we don't know exactly - until we know the experience of two or three years - how much that will really be. I don't know if I can say more than that.
MR. O'DONNELL: I will turn it back over to Brooke.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I was wondering what type of systems are in place, communication-wise, to dialogue with the injured worker applicant?
MR. COMEAU: Well, again, one group is the injured workers' associations, and they represent a certain number of injured workers, I don't know how many they represent but it's probably a couple of hundred per association, I don't know. Again, the bulk of the people we deal with are generally satisfied with what they're getting. Well, we have to keep slugging
at this consultation business, which includes the injured workers, and we have to somehow - even if an injured worker is not part of an injured workers' group, they can certainly have access to all that we have in communications to make their case.
We also have what is called a client relations officer. She is like an ombudsperson. If people are not satisfied, they can go through that particular system. You're injured six months, workers' compensation says you're injured, and after a few months workers' compensation says well, we think you can go back to work. The injured worker says, well, I don't, and my doctor tells me, and all of that stuff, I don't feel I can go back to work. It's tough. The injured worker then has no benefits until all of this is appealed. They complain and it's tough, it's not easy. We understand all of that. It's correcting it that's the issue.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Comeau, I've always been treated with respect when I made enquiries on behalf of residents in the constituency, injured workers. But sometimes we do receive complaints, or at least I do, regarding the level of co-operation and the communication level. Sometimes I wonder if an injured worker didn't enquire on a fairly frequent basis as to whether or not there's a process in place where the WCB actually, on some type of regular sequence, so to speak, dialogues back and forth with the injured worker. I would like to leave that at that.
Perhaps I could just ask you - you have a list of your WCB board members that you presented to the committee and we really appreciate that - are all these committee members Nova Scotians?
MR. COMEAU: I hope so. Sure.
MR. TAYLOR: These are all Nova Scotians?
MR. COMEAU: Yes.
MR. TAYLOR: And what constitutes a quorum on your board of directors?
MR. COMEAU: Again, we mostly operate out of consensus. The quorum - I have never had to deal with that particular question since I have been there. I think it's just a majority. There are only six board members who vote.
MR. TAYLOR: Yes.
MR. COMEAU: The at-large ones don't vote. But like I explained before, they play a very useful role in bringing consensus. They chair committees, which is something we started to do to get the independents in it, to try to get the thing working better. If there comes a time when we have to vote - we probably made the wrong thing - we really want to get consensus on the right decision. That's how we function.
MR. TAYLOR: I'm not suggesting that it be regimental or anything like that, but I just wondered on what frequency the board members meet, what the quorum is and what the attendance is. Is it required that a board member physically attend these meetings, or can they do it by conference call?
[10:30 a.m.]
MR. COMEAU: We do have a conference system but that board members attend - I could give you the attendance. I don't recall, they are generally all present. Prior to my arriving there, they used to meet a couple of days a month. We have cut that back to one day and the principal reason for that was so that we focus on policy and not on management. We have tried to refocus ourselves into just dealing with policy issues and so on and so forth, but I should say we do have attendance by teleconference.
MR. TAYLOR: The governance manual, Mr. Comeau, did you say that is on-line now or will be going on-line?
MR. COMEAU: If it's not on-line, it is close to it.
MR. TAYLOR: It is close to being on-line. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, we will turn it over to the NDP caucus again. Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: Okay, I will start. Since the legislation in Bill No. 90 has been passed, up until October 3rd, how many people were put into chronic pain?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Under Section 10E?
MR. CORBETT: Yes.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Approximately 100 a year. So that is the basis upon which we costed a future chronic pain program. That's been our experience with long-term compensation.
MR. CORBETT: Since October 3, 2004, to date, how many have you put in chronic pain?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: We have not made any decisions with respect to chronic pain since the Supreme Court of Canada's decision. In particular, the FRP. regulations that would have required us to terminate benefits after four weeks, once there was a diagnosis of chronic pain, have not been followed since October 3rd. So there has been a continuation of benefits and there have been no workers disadvantaged by the fact that the high-level framework on chronic pain is not yet known.
MR. CORBETT: So what were you getting under Section 10B?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Section 10B stated that any injured workers injured before 1990 did not receive compensation for chronic pain so there wouldn't have been anybody receiving compensation.
MR. CORBETT: So in that interim then, working on that 100 number, what do you think were the savings to the board a year by getting those people out of the system, under Section 10E?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: I'm sorry, I don't understand your question.
MR. CORBETT: Well, you would have paid them so many weeks, right, and then you would have said, that's it.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Under the functional restoration program?
MR. CORBETT: Yes.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: I'm sorry, I don't follow you because Section 10E was a 50 per cent earnings loss.
MR. CORBETT: What I'm saying is that those who you refused, that you put into chronic pain and that didn't fit in Bill No. 90 . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: So they were injured after February 1, 1996.
MR. CORBETT: No, no, they were injured or they were in the disallowed period after the introduction of Bill No. 90 and those who came into the system after the passage of Bill No. 90 and were put down as chronic pain, how much money do you feel that the board would have saved in what they paid them?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: I'm sorry, Mr. Corbett, I'm not following your question.
MR. CORBETT: These people were put back to work as basically a lot of these people . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Are you talking about the window-period population or are you talking about the injured workers injured after February 1996?
MR. CORBETT: I'm talking about workers injured after Bill No. 90 who were injured, say December 1, 1999 or 2000.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Okay there was Section 10E . . .
MR. CORBETT: Like everybody who was injured in that time frame . . .
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: In that window period.
MR. CORBETT: Yes.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: I can't answer that question. I'm not sure what the . . .
MR. CORBETT: Just about everybody who had, it seemed like the scapegoat of WCB was you got chronic pain.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Section 10E, which was passed by the government in 1999, provided a permanent of 50 per cent earnings loss to certain injured workers who satisfied the criteria set out in the legislation.
MR. CORBETT: It was retroactive.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: It was retroactive. It was a period of benefits provided between 1990 and 1996. As of that date, the functional restoration program regulations put in place by the government in 1996 continued to be law and required the board to terminate benefits four weeks post-diagnosis of chronic pain.
MR. CORBETT: That is absolutely right. So by treating chronic pain with just four weeks, can you do an estimate of how many people you treated within that group that could have gone out further?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: I am unable to.
MR. CORBETT: That's is why I have asked the question. You average 100 people a year and you have put nobody in there after October 3rd.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: We have stated in our costing estimates that if, in fact, chronic pain is compensable in the go forward, that it is going to cost an additional $11 million, again this is estimate, extra claim costs, additional claim costs. In addition to the $200 million to $350 million on the benefits liability because what we are talking about with that amount of money is going back almost 20 years, retroactively going back to 1985 which is the effective date of Section 15 of the charter and retroactively adjudicating chronic pain compensation. That is where that large sum of money comes from is going back almost 20 years in time. The go forward, assuming injured workers present with chronic pain and
there is a high-level framework for compensation for chronic pain, we are talking about $11 million additional claim costs.
MR. CORBETT: So as we sit here today, what are you doing to contact those people?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: We have every injured worker who is interested in this issue - and there are many injured workers who are interested - every individual who has called us, we have taken their name and their contact information. There have been over 500 of those and we have kept in touch with them periodically, by letter, saying here is where we are in the process, it's a legislative process underway, and we will be in touch with you once we have a high-level framework for chronic pain in place by the government. In addition, there is a population of injured workers who are being serviced by the Workers' Advisers Program on hold at the Court of Appeal. The Workers' Advisers Program is taking care of their interests. Again, until we see what the high-level framework is, we have made certain assumptions about the populations affected by that.
MR. CORBETT: So the board itself is not charging somebody to go back into the files and these people who we may have booted out, go back and find them.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: The board is based on the fact that there isn't a high-level frame work for chronic pain compensation in place yet and again the board is going to be making that recommendation on it's view of what that should look like given all of the consultation it has done. As soon as we have an indication from government about what the rules will be in place for chronic pain, then it is our job to implement that. So what the board of directors has done is approved a budget to set up a new chronic pain unit. We are in the recruitment process for case managers to staff that unit and as soon as we have an indication through the legislative process that the rules are clarified around chronic pain, then we will be in touch with the community at large in terms of how we are going to process the work.
MR. CORBETT: The short answer is then you have not gone back and contacted those people.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, we have. I indicated we have. We have been in touch with individuals who have contacted us since October 3rd . . .
MR. CORBETT: The board has not taken it upon itself to say look, let's go revisit these files and make sure they have been contacted. It's a negative billing process that you are working under.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: We receive 34,000 to 35,000 claims a year and until we understand what the high-level rules are for chronic pain, we are unable to contact all of those injured workers to say there are rules coming. We have an assumption around the
populations impacted. We had to make that assumption to cost what a high-level framework would be but we are ready to get rolling as soon as the government and the legislative process gives a high-level indication about what the rules are.
MR. CORBETT: So what is your fear then, that we are now six weeks away basically, from April 3rd. Government has given us no indication of when they are going to reconvene the House. What is it going to mean to your shop, come April 3rd because no legislation is passed?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: What it means is that for injured workers with chronic pain who are in receipt of benefits right now, those benefits will continue. Essentially what the six-month window means is that the declaration, Section 10B and the FRP. regulations are unconstitutional was postponed for six months. Effective April 3rd, they are effectively unconstitutional and should be repealed. We have taken it upon ourselves not to apply those rules, even in advance of the April 3rd date; other than we would like to be able to start to process claims under the new rules as soon as possible, there really is no magic in the April 3rd date. There aren't any injured workers disadvantaged by the fact that perhaps the rules won't be in place, other than, in fact, that we would like to be able to adjudicate those claims. So the sooner we know what the rules are, the better it is for everybody but we have continued to pay where an injured worker would have otherwise had their benefits discontinued because of the chronic pain rules that are now unconstitutional.
MR. CORBETT: I disagree with you strongly. There are workers being discriminated against if, indeed, we don't get the April 3rd done. Anybody who is not getting benefits today is being discriminated against and that's what it is.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: As soon as we know what the rules are, we will process (Interruption) those benefits.
MR. CORBETT: But for you to say there is nobody being harmed by not having this done quickly, I strongly disagree with you.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: The ones who are in pain right now are, you are absolutely right, there is a population of injured workers injured before 1990 who were precluded from receiving anything from chronic pain because of the legislation.
MR. CORBETT: That's right.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: If that is unconstitutional and going to be repealed, it will be replaced with a set of rules - and we're just waiting to get those rules - and then we will start to adjudicate claims.
MR. CORBETT: Not to be perfectly negative, I agree with your position in going forward and keeping those people in the system. One quick statement. Board medical advisers are not specialists. I think Mr. Taylor said that they were specialists, they're G.P.S.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Let me just make one thing perfectly clear , they are specialists in performing independent medical examinations. They are all ABIME certified by the American Board of Independent Medical Examiners, as are many other practitioners in the province.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We will now turn to the Liberal caucus.
MS. WHALEN: I have a number of questions, so I will try to be quick and hopefully the answers will, as well, be fairly brief. On the original principles that we've read about - and I am a member of the Law Amendments Committee, so I had the opportunity to sit through a lot of the presentations that were made - it was mentioned there about the original principle being to be a wage-loss replacement program. Then we get into the complexity, and I was a newcomer to the whole thing, so I can certainly see that it's very complex, after listening to all that.
The pre-Hayden cases, pre-1990, those people were not being compensated on the same basis. They're not getting a wage replacement. I wonder if you could give me some idea about maybe how many people fall into that category, and perhaps what the cost would be if we were to try to bring them on-line? That's probably a huge question. (Interruptions) I'm not even thinking chronic pain.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: If I could just confer for a minute with my colleague (Interruption). We have 8,800 injured workers receiving a pension under the old Act rules. As we would all agree, those pensions are small. It's precisely why an earnings-loss system was put in place, so that we would actually compensate an injured worker for their loss of earnings as opposed to a percentage of whole body impairment, which is what you received under the old Act. There are 8,800 individuals on an earnings-loss basis. We would have to go a way, but we could certainly work that up if you desire that.
MS. WHALEN: Can I ask you, based on the 40 presentations we heard, I know there were only a few from employer groups. Of the injured workers who spoke, would you say the majority were falling into that long-term, pre-1990?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, absolutely.
MS. WHALEN: So it's definitely a group with some legitimate grievances.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I think it's the reason why there was an emerging consensus among stakeholders, and we're talking employer, labour groups and injured workers groups and our board of directors, to implement the enhancements to the supplementary benefit program, effective October 2002. That's what increased the average assessment rate to $2.57, because this is the population of workers most disadvantaged under our system, those injured prior to 1990. That recommendation that came out of the Dorsey process was implemented right away to assist those . . .
[10:45 a.m.]
MS. WHALEN: I think you indicated it hadn't gone as far as Dorsey might have had in mind, so would there be a plan, as things stabilize, and I realize you want to stabilize with chronic pain and see what the impact is, but is there some plan or stated goal to increase that again?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: The supplementary benefit program?
MS. WHALEN: The supplementary funding. Or is it too early to say?
MR. COMEAU: There are no plans, but it's an issue that's of great concern.
MS. WHALEN: Well, I'm glad to hear that it is of concern. I have another issue that came up and was mentioned by another one of the MLAs, that we often hear from constituents and I have already heard from a number of people about workers' compensation. One thing that came up, which I find troubling, is that you have a cap on what's considered the maximum salary that you will reimburse people for, so if they earn - and you can correct me if I'm wrong - more than $41,000, you're not going to get any payment for that additional amount. So you get a percentage of $41,000, if you fall in a higher amount.
That concerns me because people tend to live to a certain level. If your income is $50,000, you probably have a mortgage that equals that or rent or costs. I think this is putting a lot of hardship on the people who are injured. Many people fall into that category. A lot of skilled workers earn more than $41,000. The person I spoke to was a nurse who was injured, and she earned considerably more. What I'm wondering is, is there any plan, again, in place that will start to address that properly?
MR. COMEAU: It's in here.
MS. WHALEN: I only saw that today, so I would appreciate . . .
MR. COMEAU: We made recommendations to government, as part of Dorsey, to increase that, just that. That's part of the recommendations, to increase it. What's the number?
MR. MACLEAN: It's 152 per cent of the average industrial wage from where it is currently. I think it's 148 per cent - 144 per cent now.
MS. WHALEN: And going up to how much?
MR. MACLEAN: Going up to 152 per cent of the average industrial wage.
MS. WHALEN: So it will be moving up. The difficulty I see is that some people are, as I said, quite severely disadvantaged because they end up in debt immediately upon an injury, as soon as they're off work they have to start collapsing savings and selling property or whatever. It significantly impairs their ability to resume their life afterwards, and it places a lot of financial pressure on people as they're trying to recover. So it's a concern, and I'm glad you've addressed it. It still doesn't get up to the full recovery, does it?
MR. COMEAU: Mr. Chairman, I'm going to do a Michael Baker - I need to go to the washroom for a minute. (Laughter) I will be right back.
MS. WHALEN: I can continue. I'm quite happy to ask the executives.
MR. CHAIRMAN: One more, Ms. Whalen.
MS. WHALEN: Just one more. Again, I would like to talk briefly about prevention, because we haven't gone there this morning. I had quite a few other questions, but I've been told I can only have one more. You currently mention you have a plan, or it was mentioned, $3.6 million to promote prevention and workplace safety. Can you give me some idea of what the Department of Environment and Labour may have been paying previously, for that same function?
MR. MACLEAN: It's an easy question to answer. In the budget there was actually $0.5 million which was transferred from the Department of Environment and Labour's budget to workers' compensation. What's worth noting about this is that was for education. This is an expanded mandate at workers' compensation. We're going to be getting into things like social marketing. We have a whole complex plan around best practices, education, building leadership, self-reliance for employers, audit programs, all those types of things that are going to be part of that strategic plan.
So the $3.6 million is not just to do the things that were transferred from Environment and Labour, obviously there's a social marketing component, where we will be - not advertising but youth worker campaigns, general public awareness, those types of things. That, for example, is $1 million. There's money that's in there, that's in our budget, that has been approved to go forward for this year that we will do.
MS. WHALEN: One more, just a quick follow-up. Can you give me some indication of how Nova Scotia looks relative to other provinces, in terms of the percentage of workers who are injured on the job? Are we, on average, the same, better, worse?
MR. MACLEAN: One of the current measures used that's commonplace is time-loss accidents per 100 employers. Currently in Nova Scotia that number is 2.9, that's where we are today. It's a little bit tough to compare apples and apples with other jurisdictions because other jurisdictions don't have a waiting period, exactly. We can provide those numbers, certainly, from right across the country. We think there is room for improvement, certainly.
MS. WHALEN: Well, I'd be interested to know. I think it is a very important thing, engaging in this prevention exercise and doing a lot more. Social awareness, as you say, is important. Thanks. I will leave it at that. I know you have others to go to.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have time for one short one. Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, I understand that the Workers' Compensation Board is now responsible for safety education and injury prevention and that the Department of Environment and Labour is still responsible for safety inspections, enforcement and legislation. I just wonder how prevention and education is better served and managed by WCB.
MR. MACLEAN: I will take that question. I guess, first of all, it is worth noting that prevention was transferred to WCB by the government in terms of the response to Dorsey. When Dorsey's report was tabled to the government, the government appointed Mr. Comeau chairman of the board and part of that announcement was the transfer of the prevention mandate.
How is it better served? I think, from my perspective, and this is just a staff person speaking, but certainly having a bipartite or tripartite board of directors and stakeholders who are going to have input - and you heard a lot about consultation today - it's important that we have their input as we move forward into prevention and what are the strategic priorities, what are the things that are going to work? It's not to say that couldn't have been done at the Department of Environment and Labour because government could have chosen - in fact, it was one of the blue book commitments from the current government - to re-establish a prevention unit at the WCB or at the Department of Environment and Labour.
So in giving that mandate, I think the fact that we have a stakeholder-driven board and we have a consultation process in place, I think that working with the Department of Environment and Labour together as a system we can end up with better outcomes overall.
MR. COMEAU: We don't have the enforcement, Mr. Taylor. We have the education and prevention. Quite frankly, I went to a meeting the other day of forest products people. Some of those people are paying up to 12 per cent of their payroll to the Workers' Compensation Board. I said to them, this is crazy. You have to do something about this. The only way to do it is we have to stop the accidents. So we have to push this forward. We have to push that heavily forward.
In answer to a previous question, I hesitated a while back regarding the quorum because I couldn't remember what the Act says, but it's Section 154, I checked it. All of that is described on Page 32 of our manual there.
MR. TAYLOR: Thank you very much. Do we still have a little time, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, we have Ms. MacDonald. She has asked . . .
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I have two really quick questions. I have a question about the number of claimants that the workers' advisers are calling on their caseloads because you made reference to the appeal system, how overly complex and legalistic and all of that kind of stuff. It's been my experience that these appeals drag on and it's very difficult. I'm wondering what the caseloads are for the workers' advisers and whether or not that is going to get addressed.
MR. COMEAU: We don't know the exact numbers but that is one of the things that we have to try to make that process much more efficient. There were never any real discussions between the Workers' Compensation Board and the external appeal process. In fact, we had both WAP and WCAT at our board of directors meeting last month just to tell us because it is the system; it is not only us, the whole thing has to work correctly because we might refuse a claim. Why are there appeals? Because we refuse a claim or they are not happy with the claim. Then it goes to the appeal system and it is a long, tedious, legalistic process which we have to try to slim down.
What we are trying to do is put some performance measures on them so that they will tell us the statistics and they will tell the public the statistics and they are going to be part of this system-planning annual meeting on May 5th that I told Mr. Colwell we are having. They are going to be reporting on their performance at that particular meeting. Hopefully, at least reporting about some of these things, people will make it a bit more efficient and a bit more by implication.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There is a chapter in the strategic plan on issues resolution where there is an agreement amongst the WCB, the Workers' Advisers Program and the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal to work collaboratively to try to make the system less legalistic and to talk about other means of resolving things, disputes, in forms other than a formal appeal process. So we have started those discussions.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I understand that Nova Scotia and P.E.I. are the only two provinces that don't compensate for chronic pain. Reference was made to the small number of annual claimants in Alberta, for example, 12. How long have other provinces actually been doing what we should have been doing? The number that you cited, 100, is this because of the fact that we haven't been doing it for so long?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There are other jurisdictions in Canada that do not compensate for chronic pain. I believe Saskatchewan, either the Northwest Territories or Yukon are others. New Scotia and P.E.I. are similar in their approaches to compensation for chronic pain. P.E.I. has a similar functional restoration program in place. The assumption that there will be 100 injured workers per year compensated for chronic pain was based on our limited experience paying long-term compensation for chronic pain, and that was the only experience the board has had in that regard, is with respect to Section 10E, and that's a population of workers injured in the window period who received a 50 per cent earnings loss for chronic pain under the Bill No. 90 piece of legislation. That was our experience, approximately 100 injured workers were paid that based on the eligibility criteria. Again, that's where our estimates come from.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen, did you have another question?
MS. WHALEN: Is there more time?
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have about five more minutes.
MS. WHALEN: Really, well, I will go back to my questions. In terms of the administration of the chronic pain, I'm wondering, you mentioned that there would be new staff hired.
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, that's right.
MS. WHALEN: Do you have some idea about the internal costs of administration?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: Yes, the board of directors has approved a budget of $1.6 million for the 2004 year, to adjudicate these claims.
MS. WHALEN: I wonder if you could comment for me on the growth in your organization over the last 10 years. It was mentioned again during the Law Amendments Committee about how much your staff has increased, I think you've almost doubled in the staff component in a 10-year period. Could you explain the rationale and what's happened?
MS. MACCREADY-WILLIAMS: There have been a number of staff members added to the complement of staff over the past number of years. That has been at the board of directors' direction, really. We have very high customer service expectations of our staff, and
we report on the customer service accountabilities through our annual report. The sense was that when the former CEO joined, and the board of directors created back in 1992, the agency was severely understaffed and there needed to be a rethink and a redesign of the service provided to the customers of the program, injured workers and employers.
As indicated in Dorsey, there were issues with respect to service provision prior to the 1990s. Caseloads were simply unmanageable. Since then there have been additional staff members added to the complement. The service levels, as indicated on the charts behind you, have improved. We have higher satisfaction levels across the board, on both the injured worker and employer sides, because, I think, the caseloads are appropriate and there can be a focus on the important things, like return to work. So penny-wise, pound foolish seemed to be the philosophy before the 1990s.
On the whole, just keeping perspective here, as the Workers' Compensation Board has indicated on that four-page Building the Future brochure, when you compare apples to apples to other workers' compensation jurisdictions across Canada, our administrative costs as a percentage is still below the national average.
[11:00 a.m.]
MS. WHALEN: That's good to hear. Can I ask one more question, and that is you mentioned the . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. Whalen . . .
MS. WHALEN: It's a really quick one.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We only have a minute left and Mr. Taylor is on the list here, if you don't mind.
MS. WHALEN: Go ahead.
MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Chairman, as you know, at the Law Amendments Committee level, we had a considerable amount of concern raised by some members on the committee and the community at large, perhaps, about the face of the Workers' Compensation Board not being present. I would just like to thank the board for coming in this morning and handling some of the questions we placed, and to thank the delegation, the board of directors, all members representing the stakeholder groups for coming in, because it's really important that, in fact, the board recognizes that there are issues out here and come out into the public forum. I would just like to close by saying thank you.
MR. COMEAU: Give us more than one day, that's all. (Interruptions)
MR. CHAIRMAN: We have about one minute left. Time for a short snapper. Mr. Corbett.
MR. CORBETT: The amount of money paid to the former CEO by way of severance and a contract tender that was let out to Extreme Public Affairs January 6th of $500,000, the combination is, in round terms, $1 million. Where is that $1 million coming from? Is that coming out of the accident fund?
MR. COMEAU: We're going to spend more than $0.5 million, we're going to spend $3.6 million on prevention.
MR. CORBETT: This is a public affairs company.
MR. COMEAU: That's right. We are hiring that company to put these programs that I indicated in my opening remarks in place. We're going to be aggressively pursuing the prevention mandate. We might fail, but . . .
MR. CORBETT: What type of expertise do these guys have?
MR. CHAIRMAN: The time has expired for the committee. Again, as Mr. Taylor has said, I would like to thank the chairman and your group for coming in, the board of directors, the staff from WCB. It was very informative and we appreciated having you. Thank you very much.
MR. COMEAU: Thank you for having us.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The committee stands adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 11:03 a.m.]