Yellowknife (Jun 23/06) - A recent audit of the Workers' Compensation Board has a Yellowknife MLA suggesting the organization needs an overhaul.

The federal auditor general listed 35 recommendations on how to improve the WCB in a report tabled in the Legislative Assembly June 7.

Ivan Valic, injured while working on the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool in 1987, has been battling the Workers Compensation Board for more than 10 years to get disability payments. - Jason Unrau/NNSL photo

"The report showed the organization is loose and lax in its governance practices and that it needs a major rebuild," said Great Slave MLA, Bill Braden.

The audit suggested the role of the minister is unclear, called the claims process is inefficient and said the WCB needs to do a better job explaining its claims process to its stakeholders.

While the report will do little to help Ivan Valic, a former Yellowknife resident who is engaged in a 10-year battle with the WCB over a disability claim, it is further proof the WCB needs an overhaul, according to Braden.

The MLA has championed the case of Valic, injured while working on the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool in 1987.

Valic contends that the 1987 incident along with three other workplace injuries through to 1997 has caused him to suffer from chronic back pain. Unfortunately for Valic, it's a condition the WCB review committee and its appeals tribunal has rejected compensation for on several occasions.

These decisions, based on the WCB Act, were successfully challenged by Valic in a 2005 NWT Supreme Court ruling that says the WCB fails to treat workers suffering from chronic pain on an equal standing with other injured workers.

In the ruling, Chief Justice Virginia Schuler categorized the board's policy as it pertains to chronic pain sufferers as an infringement on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"The problem is that the board approaches the condition of chronic pain as a temporary one and all chronic pain sufferers as suffering from a temporary condition only," Schuler wrote in her decision. "It does not accept that some workers may be permanently disabled by chronic pain syndrome and fails to provide for these workers."

One recommendation from the Auditor General suggests a new communications protocol that documents the ministers' roles and relations with the council and board.

Braden said he would like to see this taken a step further.

"At present the ministerial responsibilities are appointing board and tribunal members and tabling (WCB's) annual report and that's not adequate involvement," he said.

Minister responsible for the WCB Charles Dent could not be reached for comment by press time.

In the last sitting of the Legislative Assembly, Dent did note that the WCB's Governance Council was reviewing its chronic pain policy.

"We'll have, I suspect, a new policy in place," he said.

As well, Dent said the Governance Council would not appeal the supreme court decision and is prepared to rehear Valic's case, "As soon as a freshly constituted panel can be put in place."