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Ontario Erectors Association

Director’s Message from the Office of the Employer Adviser

The WSIB has released the long awaited Doug Stanley Report.
This report, entitled PRICING FAIRNESS: A Deliverable Framework for Fairly Allocating WSIB Insurance Costs, recommends broad changes to the current WSIB funding system.
The direct impacts on employers will be a new classification system, and a new experience rating model. The classification system is modelled on the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS). It proposes a significant consolidation of rate groups,
from the current 155 down to 20 to 25 groups. It also recommends the end of multiple rate groups for employers. Instead, it proposes that employers be assessed on their predominant business activity, with no distinction for size of employer or their ability to segregate their earnings, for both classification and rate setting purposes.
The Report recommends that the current experience rating programs of NEER, CAD – 7 and MAP be replaced with a prospective model with a “risk adjusted premium rate setting.” Employers would be grouped by risk and accident costs in low, average, or high risk bands. Based on the employers’ class rate, the class premium rate would be the average premium rate for the employer. Individual employers would move up or down from the average premium rate based on their own accident experience.
The consultation on the Report will continue until April 30th. The WSIB will then develop the details of the proposals and consult on them in 2015. After that, the new system will be phased in starting in 2016.