Bill 57 explained in plain English
Respecting Injured Workers Act (Workplace Safety and Insurance Amendment), 2022
Ontario legislature bill summary, status, timeline, sponsor, votes, and official sources.
At a glance
Official Legislative Assembly of Ontario snapshot for 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. Representative vote breakdowns appear when the Assembly publishes an Ayes and Nays page for the bill.
Our plain-language take, written for civic education.
Source: By PoliticalData.ca
Bill 57 amends the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 to prevent the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board from counting potential earnings from jobs a worker does not actually have or businesses they do not carry on, unless the worker refused suitable work offered to them without good cause.
Bill 57 changes how the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board calculates payments to injured workers in Ontario. Currently, the Board can decide that an injured worker is able to earn money from work they don't actually have—for example, by assuming they could find a job paying a certain amount even if no such job has been offered to them. This bill prevents the Board from counting earnings from: 1. Jobs the worker is not actually employed in (unless the worker turned down the job when it was offered without a good reason), or 2. Businesses the worker does not actually run. In other words, the Board can only count money a worker is theoretically able to earn if that work was actually offered to them and they refused it without good cause. This is intended to make compensation calculations fairer by basing them on actual employment opportunities rather than theoretical ones. The bill came into force immediately upon receiving Royal Assent.
- Amends Section 43 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 by adding subsection (4.1)
- Prevents the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board from counting earnings from employment the worker does not actually have as part of calculating compensation, except when the worker refused suitable employment that was offered to them without good cause
- Prevents the Board from counting earnings from businesses the worker does not carry on as part of calculating compensation
- Comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent
- Injured workers in Ontario receiving compensation from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board
- The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (which must change how it calculates earnings for compensation purposes)
- The Board must not count earnings from employment the worker is not employed in, unless the worker refused suitable employment that was offered without good cause
- The Board must not count earnings from a business the worker does not carry on
- Bill received Royal Assent and came into force on the date of Royal Assent (specific date not provided in the bill text)
- The bill could affect the amount of compensation injured workers receive (potentially increasing it by preventing the Board from counting hypothetical earnings), but the bill does not provide specific estimates of financial impact
- The bill does not specify whether it has implications for the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's funding or operating costs
- The bill text does not specify penalties or enforcement mechanisms for non-compliance
- The bill text does not specify what constitutes 'good cause' for refusing offered employment
- The bill text does not define what 'suitable and available employment' means (this definition exists in the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 but is not reproduced in this bill)
- The bill text does not specify how the Board should evaluate whether employment was actually offered to the worker
- The bill text does not clarify how this change applies to cases already in progress before Royal Assent or whether it applies retroactively
- The bill text does not indicate whether this change affects appeals of previous Board decisions
Section 43 is amended to add a new subsection (4.1) that restricts the Board's ability to count hypothetical earnings from jobs a worker does not have or businesses they do not operate when calculating compensation for loss of earnings.
Source: Section 1 of Bill 57; amends Section 43 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997
Generated using AI from official bill text. Not legal advice. It is written by PoliticalData.ca for civic education, automatically checked and spot-reviewed before publishing.
Official textProcess Snapshot
Vote Summary
This bill is still active. We only show vote counts after the legislature publishes a recorded division.
No published representative vote breakdown
This bill is still moving through the process. When a recorded division is published, representative positions can be listed here.
Official sources
Status, sponsor, votes, and timeline on this page are drawn from these official legislative sources and public records. Each summary above is attributed to its own source.
How this data is sourced