Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Businesses paying in to the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission (WSCC) will not be penalized by the high rate of compensation claims made by the GNWT last year, according to president Dave Grundy.

Concerns over the amount of money the GNWT has paid out to the commission were raised several times during the month-long sitting of the legislative assembly, which wrapped up on Tuesday.

"What triggered this whole thing was that, in 2011, the GNWT had its worst performance year ever in claims growth," Daryl Dolynny, MLA for Range Lake, told Yellowknifer.

Dolynny expressed concern about an overall average rate increase of 28 cents per $100 of payroll costs employers were alerted to on Oct. 22. Dolynny asked why the GNWT's rate was only scheduled to increase by 13 cents per $100 of payroll costs next year when he knew of other employers with better claims histories whose rates were increasing more dramatically.

"The big question is, because of our poor performance as a government, our recent assessment of 13 cents per $100 of payroll was only about a 16 per cent increase over our last rate, which was at 66 cents (per $100 of payroll)," he told Yellowknifer. "Most people were getting higher assessment rates, much higher."

Jackson Lafferty, minister responsible for the WSCC, said the WSCC can only raise an employer's general assessment rates by 20 per cent per year.

Grundy explained why WSCC assessment rates are scheduled to go up across the board during the next fiscal year.

Before the financial market collapse in 2008, the WSCC did quite well on its investments and operated at a surplus of roughly 134 per cent of its total annual costs. The WSCC is a not-for-profit organization, so the decision was made to offer all employers in the NWT and Nunavut a cash rebate.

Roughly $10 million in cheques were issued by the WSCC shortly before the market collapse, said Grundy.

"So, then everybody knows what happened to the markets," he said. "We went from 134 per cent funded to just over 100 per cent funded."

Under the Workers' Compensation Act, it is illegal for the WSCC to have less on hand than it will have to pay out to all active claims, said Grundy.

"The rates increased because we were subsidizing all employers (28 cents off of their assessment rates) and we cannot afford to subsidize all employers any longer with what we're taking in," he said. "If we continued the way we were going, by the end of 2014 we would be below fully funded, which means that we would be in contravention of the Act. So then we would be breaking the law."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.