Workers' Compensation in Ontario: WSIB Claims

Ontario's workers' compensation system runs through the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997, S.O. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A (WSIA). Covered workers get no-fault wage-loss and health care benefits after a workplace injury, generally in exchange for giving up the right to sue their employer, and a WSIB decision can be challenged through an internal objection and then an appeal to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (WSIAT).

Information last verified on 2026-08-14. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Key takeaways

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses workers' compensation coverage, claims, benefits, and appeals in Ontario under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997, S.O. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, as administered by the WSIB. It does not address workers' compensation in Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, or Saskatchewan; see RecordingLaw's separate guides to those provinces.

The System Here: WSIB and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act

Ontario's workers' compensation system is administered by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997. The Act states its purpose directly: to promote health and safety in workplaces, to facilitate the return to work and recovery of injured or ill workers, to facilitate their re-entry into the labour market, and to provide compensation and other benefits to workers and their survivors. Appeals from WSIB decisions go to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal (WSIAT), an independent tribunal established under Part XI of the Act.

Like every Canadian workers' compensation scheme, Ontario's system rests on a no-fault trade, and the WSIA spells it out in specific, numbered sections rather than one general clause. Section 26(2) provides that entitlement to benefits under the insurance plan is "in lieu of all rights of action (statutory or otherwise)" a worker might otherwise have. Section 28(1) bars a Schedule 1 worker from suing a Schedule 1 employer, or that employer's directors, executive officers, or coworkers; section 28(2) applies the same restriction to Schedule 2 workers against their own employer and its people; section 28(3) limits that immunity to acts done in the course of employment. Section 30(1) preserves an exception: a worker can still have a right of action against an uninsured, non-Schedule third party, but sections 30(2) and 30(4) require the worker to elect within 3 months between claiming WSIB benefits or pursuing that third-party action, and section 30(6) treats a failure to elect as a deemed election not to receive benefits. Section 31(1)-(2) gives WSIAT exclusive jurisdiction to decide whether, and how far, a right of action is extinguished by the Act.

Who Is Covered (and Who Isn't)

WSIB coverage runs on two tracks. Schedule 1 employers pay assessed premiums into a shared collective-liability insurance fund; Schedule 2 employers, including many publicly funded bodies, cover their own workers' claim costs directly rather than pooling risk. Coverage is mandatory for both. A narrower group of industries sits under Schedule 1, Part II, where coverage is non-mandatory and an employer may voluntarily apply.

Construction carries its own, broader rule. Since 2013, independent operators, sole proprietors, partners, and executive officers of a construction business are all deemed "workers" of a deemed employer and must be covered, even with no employees at all. Only two narrow exemptions exist: work done exclusively as exempt home renovation on an existing private residence, paid directly by the occupant or their family, and one partner or executive officer per business who performs no construction work themselves (occasional site visits are fine) and files an approved declaration with WSIB.

Outside construction, independent contractors, sole proprietors, partners, and executive officers are generally not mandatorily covered. They may voluntarily apply for their own WSIB coverage, but only once any employees they have are already covered.

The Act's definition of "worker" reaches beyond a typical employee: it explicitly includes a learner, a student, an auxiliary police member, a volunteer ambulance brigade member, an approved municipal volunteer firefighter, a person summoned to fight a fire, and a person assisting a declared-emergency response, along with anyone deemed a worker under the Act or by Board order.

Federal government employees working in Ontario are excluded from the WSIA itself and are instead covered under the federal Government Employees Compensation Act, with WSIB administering their claims as if the federal government were a Schedule 2 employer. Whether that same treatment extends to employees of federally regulated private industries, such as banks, telecom, or interprovincial rail and shipping, was not confirmed for this article; a worker in one of those industries should confirm their coverage status directly with WSIB.

Filing a Claim: Worker and Employer Duties

A worker generally has 6 months to file a claim: six months from the date of an injury, or, for an occupational disease, six months from when the worker learns of the disease. A worker files a Form 6, Worker's Report of Injury/Disease, with WSIB. Extensions are discretionary; WSIB and WSIAT can extend the deadline for exceptional circumstances such as a serious health problem, a family emergency, a language barrier, a lack of awareness of the requirement, employer non-reporting combined with a coercive workplace, a change in the law, or a mental or physical incapacity caused by the injury itself.

An employer's reporting duty is shorter and stricter. WSIB says it must receive a completed accident report, Form 7, Employer's Report of Injury/Illness, within 3 business days after the employer's reporting obligation begins. That obligation is triggered when an injured worker needs treatment beyond first aid, is absent from work, earns less than their regular pay, needs modified work at less than regular pay, or needs modified work at regular pay for more than 7 calendar days.

Benefits: The 85% Rate and the 2026 Maximum

WSIB pays loss-of-earnings (LOE) benefits at 85% of a worker's pre-injury net average earnings (NAE), calculated by taking average gross earnings and subtracting standardized deductions for federal income tax, CPP contributions, and EI premiums. That 85% figure is genuinely lower than the roughly 90% rate paid in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, so a worker moving between provinces, or comparing notes with someone in another one, should not assume the rate is the same. If a worker returns to modified or lower-paid work, WSIB pays a partial LOE benefit equal to 85% of the difference between pre-injury and post-injury earnings. NAE may be recalculated after 12 weeks of benefits.

That rate applies up to an annual ceiling. For 2026, WSIB's Maximum Insurable Earnings (MIE) figure is $121,700, up from $117,000 in 2025. The MIE caps both the premium base employers pay into and the earnings figure used to calculate a worker's benefit; earnings above it are not used in the LOE calculation.

Beyond wage-loss benefits, WSIB pays for necessary health care connected to a compensable injury or illness, including active programs covering drugs, hearing, mental health, musculoskeletal conditions, mild traumatic brain injury, and specialized recovery services. A worker with a lasting impairment who has reached maximum medical recovery may also be entitled to a Non-Economic Loss (NEL) award, rated as a percentage of whole-person impairment and paid as a lump sum. The underlying rating methodology and base-amount calculation were not independently confirmed against WSIB's own policy text for this article, so a worker facing a NEL determination should raise the specifics of their rating with WSIB directly.

Appeals: Two Objection Deadlines, Then WSIAT

WSIAT states its own deadline directly: a worker or employer has 6 months from the date of the final WSIB decision, meaning the decision issued after the internal objection stage, not the original case-manager decision, to file an appeal. A right-of-action determination under section 31, deciding whether a worker's ability to sue survives the Act's bar, sits outside this appeal track entirely: WSIAT has exclusive jurisdiction over that question, and challenging its determination means judicial review at the Divisional Court rather than a further WSIAT appeal.

Protection From Reprisals

Ontario splits worker protection across two statutes, and conflating them is a common mistake. The WSIA itself does not contain a general "no penalty for filing a claim" clause; its own list of employer offences, sections 149 through 157, covers false statements, failure to register or report, obstruction of investigations, and wage-statement violations, but not retaliation against a worker for exercising WSIA rights. The general anti-reprisal protection instead runs through section 50 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), a separate statute, which protects a worker who refuses unsafe work or raises a health and safety concern.

What the WSIA does give an injured worker directly is a re-employment obligation under section 41: the injury employer must offer the worker the first available suitable work most similar to their pre-injury job, and keep doing so until the earlier of one year after the worker is medically able to perform their essential pre-injury duties, or the worker turning 65.

Put together, an Ontario worker's practical protection is a combination of OHSA's reprisal ban and the WSIA's re-employment duty, not a single WSIA reprisal clause the way some other provinces structure it.

For workers' compensation in Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, see RecordingLaw's separate guides to Quebec workers' compensation, British Columbia workers' compensation, Alberta workers' compensation, and Saskatchewan workers' compensation.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about the workers' compensation system in Ontario. It is not legal advice and does not create a lawyer-client relationship. It addresses the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997, S.O. 1997, c. 16, Sched. A, as administered by the WSIB, current as of the verification date above. A handful of details, including the exact wording of WSIB's own objection-deadline page, the WSIAT time-extension practice direction, the NEL rating methodology, and whether federally regulated private-sector employees follow the same GECA treatment as federal government employees, are based on reported or secondary-sourced guidance that was not independently confirmed against WSIB's or WSIAT's primary text for this article; confirm current requirements directly with WSIB or WSIAT before relying on them for a specific claim. Anyone with a workplace injury or a WSIB dispute should contact WSIB directly or consult a lawyer licensed in Ontario.