Bill 86 repeals the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 and enacts the Meredith Act (Fair Compensation for Injured Workers), 2025 to create a reconstituted statutory scheme for no‑fault compensation, rehabilitation and dispute resolution for workplace injuries and workplace diseases. It sets out new institutional arrangements—renaming the WSIB as the Workers’ Compensation Commission of Ontario and continuing a separate appeals tribunal—while declaring principles intended to prioritize timely, proportionate compensation and independence from executive interference.
The measure matters because it restructures how benefits are calculated, how rehabilitation is delivered, who sits on the governing board, and how legacy cases move from the old regime into the new one. That combination reshapes the fiscal and administrative responsibilities of employers, the Commission, and the provincial government and alters procedural rights for injured workers and employers when disputes arise.
At a Glance
What It Does
Establishes the Workers’ Compensation Commission of Ontario to administer a fund paid by employer premiums and obliges it to deliver compensation, medical coverage, and retraining to injured workers. It also continues a standalone appeals body (the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Tribunal of Ontario) to hear disputes about Commission decisions and policies.
Who It Affects
Injured workers and their dependants, employers (including how premiums and reporting rules apply), recognized worker organizations and employer associations (through board representation), lawyers and advisers who handle compensation claims, and the tribunal system that adjudicates appeals.
Why It Matters
The Act changes benefit design, governance and procedural safeguards simultaneously: it sets new substantive replacement and rehabilitation entitlements, tightens information-sharing and reporting duties, creates mandated advisory offices and service standards, and sets a multi‑year plan to convert existing WSIA cases into the new framework—raising immediate operational and funding questions for stakeholders.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Meredith Act redraws the architecture of Ontario’s workplace injury compensation system. It replaces the name and mandate of the current board with a Commission charged to collect employer premiums into a single fund and to pay all compensation, administration and program costs from that fund.
The Act emphasizes rapid payments and data collection, and it expressly frames all Commission assets as held in public trust for current and future injured workers.
On benefits, the Act creates a wage‑loss scheme that replaces lost earnings using a ‘deemed income’ test and directs the Commission to pay a high proportion of the resulting gap to injured workers. It requires interim payments when the Commission cannot decide entitlement quickly, preserves employer‑provided non‑taxable benefits while compensation lasts, and obliges the Commission to maintain medical and rehabilitation programs, including education and retraining designed around labour‑market demand.
Permanently injured workers can also receive compensatory payments for intangible loss, pain and suffering, and eligible dependants of deceased workers gain specified education and income support entitlements.Governance and process are tightly specified. The Commission’s board must include worker and employer representatives drawn from pre‑identified industries, a general worker and a general employer representative, and a Chair chosen by the board (or by the Chief Justice if the board deadlocks).
The Act continues an external Tribunal to hear appeals from Commission decisions, gives the Tribunal specific powers to strike down Commission policies that conflict with the Act, and sets disclosure rules intended to make Commission files available on appeal, with adverse inferences if material is withheld. Separate Offices of the Worker Adviser and Employer Adviser remain, with funding and service standards to assist clients.The Act sets out transitional mechanics for moving cases from the repealed WSIA into the new scheme.
Existing recipients continue under the predecessor Act until their case is reviewed, and the government must begin reviews within a year and complete them on a set multi‑year schedule. The Act also contains specific rules about reporting, confidentiality, referral to police or the Ministry where criminal or OHSA concerns arise, and limits on the Commission’s collection and use of personal information to what is reasonably necessary for its functions.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Lost‑earnings payments are calculated at 90% of the shortfall between a worker’s deemed income and any earnings during the period, after subtracting any tax that would be payable if the compensation were income.
If the Commission cannot decide lost‑earnings entitlement within 15 days of notice, it must provide interim compensation; those interim payments are not recoverable except when fraud leads to a criminal conviction.
The Commission must establish a pension plan for permanently injured workers without employer plans and pay contributions of at least 17% of the injured worker’s lost earnings for members who opt in; if an employer‑employee relationship is severed by Tribunal declaration, the commuted value of the employer pension is to be transferred into the Commission’s plan.
In appeals about the duty to accommodate under the Human Rights Code, the Tribunal must accept the opinion of a qualified medical practitioner about medical facts and accommodation recommendations as dispositive of those medical facts.
Transition reviews of existing WSIA cases must begin no later than one year after proclamation, with at least 20% of required reviews completed between each subsequent anniversary and all reviews finished within six years, prioritizing the oldest cases first.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Purpose, definitions and interpretive principles
Part I restates the no‑fault compact as the Act’s foundational purpose and sets interpretation rules that favour proportionate, prompt compensation and the Commission’s independence. The definition section broadens the statutory concept of worker to include co‑op students, apprentices and volunteers for purposes of entitlement. The ‘workplace disease’ test is evidence‑based and presumes additive exposures unless disproved, shifting the evidentiary frame toward causation findings that favour claimants.
New benefit architecture and employment security
This Part contains the mechanics for calculating lost earnings (deemed income, tax adjustments, indexation), the conditions that end payments, and rules for ancillary benefits such as employer‑provided insurance and pension contributions. It creates enforceable employment‑security language requiring accommodation up to undue hardship and lets the Commission mediate or, failing that, decide disputes between employers and injured workers—decisions that can be appealed but that are binding at the Commission level.
Medical coverage and retraining obligations
The Commission must pay for medically appropriate diagnostics, treatments, medications and devices not covered by OHIP, develop and renew policies every three years, and coordinate with private insurance so the Commission only covers gaps. It also must deliver individualized education and retraining for permanently injured workers, assessing local labour markets, seasonal patterns and the worker’s aptitudes to place claimants ‘at least as well’ in the labour market.
Tribunal mandate, disclosure and accommodation appeals
The Tribunal’s mandate includes review of Commission delays and of Commission policies applied to decisions. The Commission must disclose communications and documents used to make decisions; failure to disclose creates an adverse inference for the claimant. For duty‑to‑accommodate appeals the Tribunal treats a qualified medical practitioner’s opinion as dispositive on medical facts, which narrows the evidentiary scope for contesting those medical findings during accommodation disputes.
Commission powers, information rules and governance
Part V empowers the Commission to set employer premium levels and allocation methods, establish public policies and retain staff, and requires annual auditing by the Auditor General. It imposes limits on personal information collection (medical practitioners decide necessary scope), binds medical‑record redactions to patient consultation, and gives the Commission a statutory duty to give claimants the benefit of the doubt in entitlement determinations. The board composition rules require industry‑based selection processes and effectively guarantee worker and employer representation.
Tribunal composition, adjudicator standards and funding
The Tribunal is headed by a Chief Adjudicator with specified senior experience; Adjudicators cannot do outside paid work and face a structured investigatory and remedial discipline process for credible allegations. The Chief Adjudicator sets appeal practice and procedure and prepares an annual budget that the Commission must fund; the Tribunal’s accounts are also audited by the Auditor General, creating fiscal transparency for the appeals body.
Transition rules and regulatory framing
Transition provisions keep the predecessor Act’s benefits for recipients until an explicit review under the Meredith Act, require a staged review schedule with prioritization of older cases, and allow the Lieutenant Governor in Council to restate legacy WSIA content in regulation. The transition design attempts to prevent abrupt benefit reductions but imposes a concentrated administrative workload—regulated details and published explanations of regulations are mandatory under this Part.
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Who Benefits
- Permanently injured workers — they gain a defined lost‑earnings replacement framework and entitlement to compensatory payments for intangible loss and access to Commission‑funded medical care and retraining aimed at restoring labour‑market prospects.
- Dependants of deceased workers — the Act guarantees funerary expenses, time‑limited lost‑earnings payments, and access to education and retraining to replace the deceased worker’s earning capacity.
- Represented workers’ organizations and employer associations — statutory representation on the Commission’s board gives these groups formal influence over premium apportionment and policy development.
- Users of advisory services — the Office of the Worker Adviser and the Office of the Employer Adviser receive guaranteed funding and service standards (e.g., 15‑day meeting targets), improving access to legal and administrative support for claimants and small employers.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers — the Commission sets total employer premiums and may apportion rates by class, industry and workplace risk; employers face new registration and reporting requirements and potential premium increases to fund expanded benefits.
- The Commission (administration) — establishing and operating a new pension plan, administering second‑opinion processes, funding interim payments and running a multi‑year transition will increase administrative complexity and program costs.
- Provincial government/Crown employers — the Act makes the Crown exempt from premium obligations unless the Legislature appropriates funds, creating potential budget pressures if the Crown is treated as an employer for program benefits or commutation transfers occur.
- Plan administrators and private insurers — the Commission’s secondary‑payer rules and the requirement to maintain employer benefits for the duration of employment shift coordination costs onto private plans and necessitate clearer integration rules.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between improving and accelerating benefits for injured workers (and insulating the system from executive interference) versus ensuring the Commission’s fund remains solvent and employer premiums remain economically sustainable; the Act resolves generosity and independence in favour of workers but leaves funding, actuarial and regulatory choices to the Commission—and those choices will determine whether the promised benefits are durable or fiscally contentious.
The Act stacks more generous and administratively demanding entitlements onto a pay‑as‑you‑go system financed by employer premiums. Legislating a high replacement rate, mandatory pension contributions, expanded medical coverage and a duty to fund retraining raises immediate questions about premium adequacy and intergenerational equity in the fund.
The Commission’s broad discretion to set premium apportionments, payment schedules and policy details places heavy weight on regulatory design and the Commission’s actuarial judgments; insufficient premium setting could create deficits, while aggressive premiums would shift costs to employers.
Several operational tensions are unresolved. The deemed‑income methodology and indexation rules can create both windfalls for some claimants and cliff effects where small changes in reported earnings trigger overpayment recoveries.
The Act’s evidence rules—most notably the presumption that medical opinions accepted by the Tribunal in accommodation disputes are dispositive—streamline some cases but may foreclose meaningful medical contestation where experts disagree. Finally, the six‑year transition schedule protects current recipients but concentrates administrative effort and creates legal uncertainty for claimants whose cases await review.
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