Workers' Compensation

Here we go again: Ontario businesses to get $2 billion back after WSIB posts huge surplus

Over decades, the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board (WSIB) managed to amass a huge deficit – an Unfunded Liability –which compromised its ability to cover injured workers benefits.

In 2018, however, the WSIB declared that 100% of that liability had been recouped and employer premiums were bringing in enough money to cover injured workers' claims.

The workers' compensation system should provide good benefits and a dignified quality of life to injured workers. Instead, injured workers face a long claims and appeals process, rejected claims, and inadequate benefits – especially with the rising cost of living.

In 2021, the WSIB had a reserve of $6.4 billion. That should have been great news for injured workers. But instead, the WSIB returned over $1.2 billion of that money to employers.

In 2024, the WSIB posted another surplus and in November, Doug Ford announced that about $2 billion of that surplus will again be returned to eligible Ontario businesses. Plus, employers are paying less and less in premiums each year.

Between 2016 and 2020, the average premium rate was reduced by 47%: from $2.59 in 2016 to $1.37 in 2020.

Since then, the average rate has only continued to decrease to reach a rate of $1.25 in 2024. According to the WSIB, that is the lowest rate in more than 20 years.

It is clear that the WSIB maintains its coffers and builds its surpluses by taking money out of the pockets of injured workers through denials of claims, reduction in benefits and services, deeming, and more.

The WSIB is a provincial agency that is supposed to provide no-fault insurance coverage to injured workers. Yet our elected Members of Provincial Parliament (MPPs) allow the WSIB to deny claims and benefits and allow corporate pay-backs to occur. Any surplus money has clearly come out of the pockets of injured workers through denied claims and reduced benefits.

This surplus shouldn’t exist at all.

Want to see money going to benefit injured workers instead of back to employers? Connect with your MPP and ask them to fight for injured workers, not corporations. Visit ufcw175.com/wsibsurplus2025