MORE EVIDENCE THAT CANADIAN DEMOCRACY IS WEAK

Laws are a joke particularly when they are selectively enforced, if at all. Today's Waterloo Region Record advises us that a Kitchener resident has spent fourteen years fighting for compensation in her husband's death from mesothelioma or asbestos caused lung cancer. Her husband worked for B.F. Goodrich rubber plant in Kitchener for 38 years. So after fourteen years of sending in medical reports and jumping through hoops and loops the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) have just graciously advised her that her claim had been accepted. Wow those filthy shi.s. Between 2002 and 2017 only fifteen percent of occupational disease claims filed by rubber workers were approved by the Board. In 2018 after massive public exposure in the Waterloo Region Record (and other newspapers) the Board were ordered by the Ontario government to form a review team to re-examine more than 300 claims filed by rubber workers in Waterloo Region. It seems that our provincial government didn't appreciate too many citizens and voters learning that the Workman's Compensation system was more about talk and appearances and less about either protecting or assisting workers after they'd been injured. ..................................................................................................................... What a filthy system we have in Ontario. Court costs, court delays and lawyers fees have made access to the legal system intentionally onerous if not impossible for many citizens even those with full time jobs. This is not unintentional. After all the system only works for the few if the masses are generally excluded from it. It was partially based on this that the government of the day passed legislation that even us older citizens can't remember because it was so long ago. Our own government sold the Workman's Compensation System and the WSIB on the basis of look we'll eliminate the dubious right of workers to sue for health damages and replace it with a nuetral, independent of employers, government run system to compensate injured workers who can no longer work. They planned to finance this system with premiums paid by employers based upon their proven injury and disease statistics. Well first off the WSIB has never been nuetral. Secondly they and the provincial government are constantly lobbied by industry and business to keep costs such as licenses, taxes, premiums down. In no time at all this workman's compensation system turned into a cost reduction exercise by the government and the WSIB and the only way to do that was by pretending to rely on science and doctors to minimize acceptance of claims for any of dozens of reasons/excuses. ................................................................................................................. The title of the article in today's Record is "Kitchener rubber worker's WSIB claim accepted" written by Chris Seto. By the way the Record and reporter Greg Mercer won a Michener-Deacon Fellowship for their investigative reporting on this matter.