Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Good morning, Mr. Speaker. The issue of unresolved workers’ compensation claims of injured workers has been the subject of many of my statements and questions. For some injured workers, Mr. Speaker, through our process, it has become a never-ending treadmill of appeals and systemic process. For a number of these workers, when they think they are getting ahead, wouldn’t you know it, but along comes some rule changes.

Mr. Speaker, just to explain briefly, if a worker is injured on the job, they expect to receive a disability pension, or allowance, depending on their injury, for the time that they are not able to work. In order to determine the amount of this compensation, the WCB takes into account their finances for a year, and a calculation is done on whatever their earnings or remuneration were.

Now in the NWT, Mr. Speaker, and Nunavut, we have a lot of seasonal jobs, like firefighting, mineral exploration, fishing and trapping, and they are the only sorts of income for some people. As I said, a lot of them are very seasonal by nature.

I am advised that Newfoundland and Nova Scotia do include employment insurance earnings in the remuneration calculations in the case of workers who may get injured on seasonal jobs.

Mr. Speaker, there have been a number of cases before the WCB Appeals Tribunal on the issue of whether or not to include employment insurance earnings. In fact, this tribunal has ruled in favour of some workers, with regard to the inclusion of EI. Once again, when workers think they are going to receive fairness and justice, guess what? Those rules get changed.

The WCB Governance Council, in September of this year, revised a policy redefining remuneration that specifically excluded employment insurance from the calculation for these workers. In addition to that, they backdated it, Mr. Speaker, all the way back to 1977. Mr. Speaker, this action flies in the face of tribunal decisions and, indeed, in the face of the high number of seasonal workers in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, and it’s time that this policy was revisited. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

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