First responder resolution heads to Union of B.C. Municipalities

The fatal crash of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili while training at the 2010 Winter Olympics was viewed with horror around the world.

The Games went on as planned, but for one of the first responders at the Whistler Sliding Centre that day, life did not. Days later, Terrance Kosikar tried to commit suicide.

“Four days after that, I was diagnosed with PTSD, and everything fell apart from there,” the first aid attendant told Postmedia News.

Kosikar’s story is not unusual among first responders, who frequently deal with traumatic events. Neither is his struggle to get help from WorkSafeBC for the mental injury he says he suffered doing his job at the luge track on Feb. 12, 2010.

He is one of several first responders applauding a resolution that is to be brought to the Union of B.C. Municipalities’ annual meeting next month. It would ask the provincial government to change WorkSafeBC legislation so that illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder would be presumed to have happened at work until proven otherwise. Currently, the first responder must prove their job led to PTSD.

A private member’s bill sponsored by NDP MLA Shane Simpson to similar effect last year was not adopted, but the municipal politicians behind the UBCM resolution are hoping their position as employers of hundreds of firefighters and, in many cases, police officers gives them standing.

“These are our employees, and we have the responsibility to make sure they can get the help they need,” said Coquitlam Coun. Dennis Marsden, who first brought the resolution to Coquitlam council before it was sent to the UBCM.

Marsden said he’s spoken to a first responder who, in one week, dealt with the death of an infant, a suicide and a fatal car accident.

“How do you shake that off?” he asked.

So far in 2016, 46 first responders across Canada have taken their own lives, according to the Tema Conter Memorial Trust, a charity that tracks suicides. In B.C. in 2016, 14 first responders have committed suicide, the highest of any province. It is not clear how many were suffering from PTSD, but some recent cases, including that of Surrey firefighter Kevin Hegarty, who committed suicide in 2015, led local departments to speak out on the issue.

Marsden’s resolution says that upon diagnosis by a medical professional, WorkSafe should assume first responders’ mental injuries happened during employment, as is the case with certain types of cancers common in firefighters. If WorkSafeBC can later prove otherwise, the claimant would be on the hook for benefits paid. This is already the law in four other provinces, meaning first responders get help immediately rather than waiting months for claims to be approved.

Kosikar believes the proposed changes would have made a difference. Because he was unable to see a psychiatrist right away, he began taking large quantities of anti-depressants and other medications, eventually becoming reliant on the drugs. When his work began to suffer, his employer told him to make a claim with WorkSafe. For the next five years, he tried to prove his PTSD began because of the events he witnessed as an emergency medical responder at the luge track. He was ultimately unsuccessful.

Labour Minister Shirley Bond would not comment on the UBCM resolution before the meeting takes place.