THE WSIB POWER IMPLANTS – PART IV

          POLICIES CONCERNING             DIFFERENTIATED EVIDENTIARY REQUIREMENTS AND ADJUDICATIVE PRINCIPLES

INTRODUCTION

This is my fourth, and last, post on the WSIB’s four, mysterious power implants inserted in Ontario’s WSIA by means of the “Stronger, Healthier Ontario Act (Budget Measures), 2017 in Schedule 33 of Bill 127.   For a description of all four of those implants see the Part I post via the link set out at the end of this post.

In this post I will address the  fourth power implant – i.e., the addition of a power to establish policies that apply different evidentiary requirements and different adjudicative principles to different types of entitlements  – 159(2.1).

CONCLUSION

As with implants I and II and III, it is my opinion that the implanting of this explicit power to establish different policies concerning evidentiary requirements and adjudicative principles for different entitlement issues does not add to the Board’s substantive powers, always implicit, to choose the evidentiary requirements and adjudicative principles that will be applied in its adjudication of particular issues.

As was the case before this implant, the content of the Board’s policies regarding differentiated evidentiary requirements and adjudicative principles established pursuant to the new policy-making powers will continue to be subject to the limitations inherent in the well-settled common law principles governing the interpretation of the Act, the standard of proof, the proper purpose requirement, and the principles of procedural fairness.

RE