WATERLOO REGION RUBBER WORKERS HEALTH DAMAGES BELATEDLY ACKNOWLEDGED

Ten days ago the Waterloo Region Record published the following story titled "Former rubber worker's cancer linked to his employment". This past January the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) advised his family in writing that Mr. Stojsic's death in 2010 was "work related" following nearly three decades of his exposure to rubber, asbestos and lead. I will add that he was also likely exposed to lots of solvents in the air as well. Surprise, surprise, Mr. Joseph Stojsic's brother, Edward, also worked for decades in the rubber industry and he died three years ago courtesy of colon cancer.

The rest of this article written by James Jackson advises readers that to date only a very few (31) out of the three hundred denied claims ordered to be reviewed by the WSIB have been reversed. Statistics on the new claims filed since the expose in the Record are not available.

The WSIB under orders from successive provincial governments have kept claims low via psuedo science, demanding unreasonable "proof" of work related illness and by simply having persons in charge of the WSIB (like Liz Witmer, former MPP) who are long on smoothness and puffery while short on emotion and or reasonableness. The reasons for keeping successful claims low is simply costs. If you as a senior bureaucrat in the WSIB are ordered directly by your boss (and indirectly by the province of Ontario) to decrease costs by ten percent, while what easier method is there than to reduce your percentage of successful claims for financial compensation for work related illness and disease? Both sad and pathetic.

So here we are today and our federal (and provincial) governments are cheerfully throwing money at employees, wage earners, businesses, students, self-employed etc. in relation to Covid 19 economic impacts. Please notice that there are no high barriers, extensive interviews, demands for more and more documented proof to back your claim/application. You have lost money due to Covid so here you go right away.

Guess what folks? Where do you think this money is coming from? Is it actually "real" money backed by anything at all such as an asset of some sort? Partly where it is coming from is from the millions of Canadian citizens who have been robbed, lied to, and denied services and supports over the last fifty years by both our federal and provincial governments. Those governments have charged exorbitant taxes throughout while nickel and dimeing the sick, the elderly, the disabled, workers, minorities, women, indigenous groups etc. They then have distributed much of those monies to the powerful, wealthy, influential and especially to those viewed as friends of the current government.

This current crisis directly involves approximately 35 million Canadians. It's easy to screw hundreds to thousands of people out of a population of many millions. That said right now our thieving, lying governments are treading very softly and carefully. If they choose to screw all Canadians simultaneously there will be an awful price for them to pay and they aren't yet willing to take that risk.