Dave Sullivan
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Aug 17/01) - Companies have pleasant experiences while workers get little satisfaction in their dealings with NWT's Workers' Compensation Board, a review panel heard this week.

It's been a nightmare for carpenter Michelle Delasalle, since his 1999 workplace injury.

Yet oil giant Imperial has enjoyed "a very good experience with board staff over the years, they've never done anything to make our lives difficult," said Peter Miller, a company lawyer representing the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Delasalle has received just $5,000 from the board since Jan. 25, 1999. That's when he says a building contractor expected him to tear down a wall at Sir John Franklin high school, without proper tools or the electricity shut off. His crowbar touched an electrical panel. At first the electrocution affected just his left arm, but within a couple days his right arm was also useless.

Delasalle's life of poverty since the accident "isn't right," he told a panel travelling throughout NWT and Nunavut. His wife is holding down three jobs to keep up with mortgage payments.

"The WCB management is not what it perceives to be," he said.

Unfortunately for Delasalle the panel, appointed by cabinet ministers in each territory to recommend changes to workers' compensation acts, isn't interested in complaints with the way the WCB is run.

As chair Louise Vertes explained to him, that's part of the board's day to day operations. The review is just about changing legislation.

Delasalle's response: "Maybe there should be a little more accountability in the act."

Later he called the review a "whitewash."

Vertes said later, "What's been difficult for us is looking at legislation and not operations. It's hard to separate the two."

She said she's attempting to translate management issues into legal ones.

Imperial lawyer Miller doesn't believe legislation should be more detailed in the way it spells out how managers do their jobs.

He said making the act more specific that way would open more doors to lawsuits.

Miller said he believes lawyers like him are already far too involved with the worker's compensation system.

"We've allowed the legal profession to move in and take a larger role than it deserves," he said.

"The workers' compensation system was designed to be a compassionate humane response ... that's been turned into an acrimonious, adversarial system."

Vertes suggested NWT's act needs a "presumption in favour" clause.

That would mean rulings in workers' favour for claims difficult to prove one way or the other

The panel is conducting the third WCB review in 15 years. Vertes, a former NWT deputy minister, said some changes recommended in the past, like ending the political nature of board appointments, have never been implemented.

The panel wraps up hearings Aug. 17, but will receive written submissions until Aug. 24. A report to cabinet ministers is due in December.