How does the WSIB chief sleep at night?

AN OPEN LETTER TO TOM TEAHEN, WSIB PRESIDENT AND CEO.

You’re awful quiet, Mr. Teahen. I’m sure you read the letters from the GE Peterborough claimants. Yet you were quick to respond to the editorial in the Peterborough Examiner. It was actually the very next day where you sang the virtues of the WSIB and how wonderful everything will be.

Really, do you honestly believe all you wrote?

If the issue we’re still dealing with 15-plus years later was not so serious your “vision,” as you call it, would be laughable.

Ontario is the safest and healthiest? We didn’t pick up on that before they put us all those “Ontario Open For Business” signs.

People are getting hurt every day on the job and people die every day because of unsafe workplaces.

I understand the original mandate of the WSIB was not to be an insurance board, but in fact it was there to help injured and sick workers get all the help needed to return them safely to their job or alternate employment employment with no loss to precious earnings.

This is what many workers thought in Peterborough as they suffered from occupational diseases like cancer, COPD and others.

GE created these unsafe workplaces. They owe it, it is time, long overdue the company is held responsible, to make sure all are compensated and the land and water they polluted is cleaned up.

Your job as CEO, Mr. Teahen, is to make sure that there is a fair process for adjudication of claims, without favouritism shown some claiments, which as you know happens, and you have been given proof of that.

Also no word on what happened to the $11.3 billion dollars shortfall. Wow, that’s not just small change, where did it go? You owe an explanation.

It is high time there is some accountability and transparency within the WSIB.

This amount of money would have finally settled Peterborough GE claims, as well as many others still waiting in Ontario, as I have no doubts 99 per cent of claims on a file with the WSIB are honest claims.

You, sir, have a lot to answer for, and you need to take seriously all concerns of letters that cross your desk and drawer. We deserve no less.

True, WSIB needs a major overhaul and get back to basics, feeling what it was intended to be.. It needs to be free of any government and corporate interference, it needs to shed the “insurance” in its wording. It is not an insurance company. It is the worker’s compensation board.

I’ll close by saying to you, sir, knowing all that is wrong within your organization you lead, how do you sleep at night? Ingtrid Buck, Fairbairn Street