Yellowknife (Feb 12/03) - Trades people in the North can make a lot of money, but too often there is a price to pay.

Too many are getting hurt on the job.

Two years ago the WCB processed claims from more than 3,100 workers --that's about 10 per cent of the 30,000 workers in NWT and Nunavut.

Last year's numbers aren't in yet, but the WCB's Dave Grundy doesn't think they will be much different.

One reason is the increasing number of `high risk' category employers in fields such as construction, mining, machining, heavy equipment, boat repair, and trucking.

One in four workers injured in 2001 lost time because of it -- 29 days on average.

That's if they were lucky. Some have yet to return to their jobs -- and some won't ever be able to go back.

In 2001, the WCB paid $9.38 million in pensions to workers injured in past years within NWT and Nunavut.

Ideally, workers who can't return to their old trade or profession receive vocational retraining through the WCB. Until recently, that hasn't been readily available to the extent needed in the North.

Happily, that service gap has been recognized by the WCB and is now being addressed.

The first tangible evidence is the newly opened Canadian Vocational Rehabilitation Services (CVRS) office on 50th Street in Yellowknife.

CVRS has contracted worker rehabilitation and related services to the WCB since 1996, but supplied those services from Edmonton. Heading up the new Yellowknife office is Shawn Roper, who did most of the travel for CVRS through the North over the past six years.

As Roper explains, CVRS offers a wide range of vocational rehabilitation services from initial assessment through skill evaluation and occupational therapy.

"Now we can provide those services locally," says Roper.

The CVRS takes referrals from employers and government as well as from the WCB.

Put broadly, their job is to develop a road map for an injured worker to follow back into the workforce.

After working with disabled people for six years, Roper can say one thing with certainty: most want to do exactly that. For the money, yes. But also for what only having a job can bring back: self-esteem, pride, purpose, a sense of belonging, and hope.

For better or worse, we are defined by what we do: mechanic, pilot, welder, or equipment operator.

Take that away suddenly and the results can be devastating, Roper observes.

And financially catastrophic, especially in the North where wages are high.

Roper recently went through the WCB pension list and began visiting people. Some were hurt as much as 10 years ago.

"Quality of life" visits, he calls them. How are things going? How can he help? That's not the way I imagined the WCB worked.

Roper estimates that about two-thirds of the people with disability pensions on his caseload no longer live in the North.

They have gone back to BC, or Manitoba, or Nova Scotia.

Many, he believes, left because they couldn't find a way back into the NWT workforce.

In a territory crying for skilled and unskilled workers, that is a shame. Roper hopes CVRS can be a part of changing that.