The McGuinty government’s promise to injured workers announced by Ontario’s labour minister this morning in Hamilton “amounts to mere crumbs and has an expiry date of 2009,” said Hamilton East MPP Andrea Horwath, the NDP Critic for Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB).

“Aside from those in building trades, most injured workers across Ontario are insulted by the crumbs the provincial budget sets aside for them, a mere 2.5% for three years.

“Injured workers are living in poverty and all they got was a pittance, a token,” Horwath said, noting that injured workers groups from across the province are “very unhappy.”

“The budget should have provided retroactivity and indexing, regular cost-of-living increases to their WSIB compensation payments bearing a lifetime warranty, not an expiry date three years from now,” Horwath said.

Horwath has introduced a private members bill calling for annual indexing of WSIB benefits for injured and disabled workers retroactive to 1994. It has the backing of the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups, who say it reflects the exact promise the McGuinty Liberals made to injured workers before the 2003 election.

“The McGuinty government is out of touch with the financial hardship injured workers endure. They’re forced to turn to social assistance and food banks to survive. These few extra dollars will do very little to help them catch up,” she said.

Horwath is also pushing for WSIB coverage for all Ontario workers as recommended in a government report from 2003.

Currently more than 1.3 million workers, some 35 per cent of Ontario’s workforce, can’t access compensation for on-the-job injuries because they are excluded under the Workplace Safety Insurance Act.