Ontario eh

Ontario eh?…

For the most part, “oh, poor Steve” died way back when. Physically, once the past was no longer an issue, I died twice more during medical procedures. Life is just too short to waste in worrying of what I could have done differently. I just may have got here a different way. Eventually, things work out. I had to fight a nasty battle with the Province of Ontario, and I did settle for what I got. Wasn’t justice – but it was a victory nevertheless. Here’s the story….

I have been screwed by this Province and its bottom-feeding policies. For more than eleven years, I had to fight a long, bitter and ugly struggle for some fair compensation that should have been due me the very day I was hurt on the job – while in the employ of this province, no less!

For many years, I placed a lot of faith in, and lived by the virtues of hard work, honest living, and trustworthy government. So many times, I’d heard the finger-pointers. I, too, looked on “welfare bums” and a large number of undeserving people on disability pensions as the reasons my tax dollars were so high. Later, I too, cursed an NDP government for that which economic reality couldn’t allow. In retrospect, Rae Days were better than no days, and even Mr Rae couldn’t untangle the spider web Workers’ Compensation Board had become.

February 28 1993 is a day I will never forget – for that was the day I died. I was washing snowplows at MTO Patrol 643’s Downsview yard when I was hurt on the job. It was just my rotten luck to have been working alone when it happened.

My nature has always been: if there’s something that needs to be done, and there’s nobody standing in line to do the job, and I’m looking for something to do, do it!

Well, as misfortune would have it, something went wrong. I was just finishing up the shady side of my fifth plow. My hose laid along the main blade. As I got near the rear axles, it (an 1¼ inch high-pressure rubber line attached to an indoor standpipe – or hydrant) jammed. That happens a lot. The simple solution, one I’d done many times, was to give the hose a quick tug. What happened this time was totally unexpected.

The stream died, then blasted back to life. The hose snapped one fast and hard gyration, taking me along with it. I remember hearing a very loud Pop! from my right arm, then a sound I can’t really describe when the back of my head slammed into the bottom bead of the plow’s dump box. I know I saw something more than stars!

I have no idea how long I was out, but my next almost clear memory came on my hands and knees, from under the truck. My ears screamed, head pounded, shoulder and neck stung, and my arm was throbbing. I watched, in a dream-like state, as that hose, reared up like a big snake, and sprayed everything within a hundred feet. That had to be just before three – shift change – because someone shut off the water. It sure wasn’t me.

I can’t remember driving the plow back to the line, but I don’t recall walking over to the bunk house either. Foreman tells me I mumbled something about my arm as I went to lay down. Next thing I recall was the foreman’s voice. Sounded like he was calling my name down a very long tube through the whistle in my head. I came to cold and sweaty and hurting like hell! He claimed I was grey, wasn’t breathing, and he couldn’t find a heart beat. I drifted in and out for I don’t know how long, then decided I should go to the hospital. Law says the employer has to take you. That would have left the station unmanned.

I don’t remember driving to York-Finch Hospital, nor do I recall the ER interview and treatment. Obviously, I’d driven there myself because my pick-up truck was right outside (in a no parking zone) The incident report was taken at 4:06. I remember getting a note from the attending physician which stated: “…One week off work and return to light duty after follow-up with patient’s family doctor….” I also recall the boss tearing that note in half and saying: “Means nothing” when I handed it to him – but he did sign a receipt for it….

As has always been my way, I refused to give in to the pain. I took a lighter-duty job until I could see my own doctor. My own non-union work ethic, and a naive trust in values which don’t exist any more, got in the way. Thus WCB got its second avenue to play its mean little game when I got a lay-off slip (dated March 6).

WCB denied the claim. The employer wouldn’t file Form 7, then denied an accident, then denied I reported the injury, then claimed the injury was deliberate because I was being laid off soon (contract ran until March 30!) then claimed Form 7 was lost in the mail. I appealed, and realised I needed some help. Meanwhile, I was stuck on Welfare.

I went back to work, and drove for a fellow who’d always admired my ability behind the wheel. Pain almost killed me, so I had the added injury of his insults when I had to leave early. I went back to driving a taxicab. Pain (and painkillers) stood in the way of that venue. I refused the Disability Allowance my doctor offered when we realized I couldn’t just climb back on from this one. This time, the hurt just wouldn’t stop.

Victoria County Social Services helped as much as any Ontario bureaucracy can when it became painfully obvious WCB was going to play me forever. I wanted to remain employable. I believed it was the honourable thing to do. In going back to college I hoped to keep the still-able part of me – a part which WCB refused to help – alive.

February 1995, I qualified for Ministry of Community and Social Services, Vocational Rehabilitation Services – a Family Benefits Act program, for which the same significant disability as for Disability benefits must be determined. One of the stipulations to be eligible for any MCSS-sponsored program is I had to abandon all claims against WCB. I did so without question. Isn’t “good government” one in whose word we can trust?

I went into treatment to recover from an addiction to painkillers during April of 1995 in order to give college my best effort.

Still annoyed by the apparent ease with which undeserving people seemed to qualify for social services, it bothered me to no end to see them cheating the system – and flaunting it unchallenged. I fell into the promises of he who later revealed himself to be an idealistic con man, his “Common Sense Revolution”, and his “War on Poverty”. My disgust with broken promises to fix WCB went to the polls with me in 1995. How could any of us have known Harris’ war would be waged against the poor – with attacks on the destitute?

I started a full-load college course in September 1995, assured that nothing could go wrong. After all, I was one of the ones who hadn’t given up on myself! Time spent in school kept my thoughts away from bureaucracies – but not pain! In that same time, WCB changed hats, shed itself of responsibilities, then re-emerged as Worker Safety Improvement Board.

School, pain, and going by the hours of someone else’s clock, proved an impossible combination. In February 1997, as required, I reported it to my VRS counsellor. In June 1998, I received a letter from the Peterborough Area manager (I was still administrated by Peterborough because I’d signed on in their area before I transferred to North Bay area – who maintained me) I was assured my transition to the new Ontario Disability Support Program would be a “smooth and seamless” one when the current VRS obligation expired.

The transition was neither smooth nor seamless. I’d been “frozen” into VRS until the program terminated in December 1998. February 1999, conveniently SIX YEARS AFTER the accident (and when the time I have to launch civil litigation expired) the persecutions began.

First notice of what was to be came in a letter, which stated that the VRS program had terminated as of December 31 1998, so I owed them an overpayment of $930.00. Later, when I filed to appeal, I was telephoned by someone from the same office, acting on behalf of the Social Assistance Review Board, asking me to drop my appeal because the overpayment was cancelled.

Now, I was abandoned to Welfare and forced to beg for that for which I had already qualified four years before. So much for a belief in turning cheeks and a faith that patience, persistence and promises will ever win a battle. How ironic: I became one of those folks I once so detested! Here, but for the grace of God, go you.

That time I spent in school gave Ontario its most golden of opportunities. Due to changed rules and mean-spirited tactics developed to perpetuate a Common Sense lie, I was denied an allowance I qualified for in 1995 – twice! In the eleven years since that accident which robbed me of my ability to earn self-respect and dignity, I was bullied by unconscionable bureaucracy.

Re-opening my old WCB file is not an option in a re-structured WSIB. CPP disability isn’t available for I can no longer meet the criteria. Other pre-existing medical conditions (arthritis, fibromyalgia, heart to name a few) have worsened, yet both times the “appeals” bureaucracies – the “arm’s length” Tribunal and Ombudsman Ontario – rubber-stamped ODSP’s original decision. Oddly enough, that same person who’d represented himself as from the SARB in the overpayment, now represented ODSP at the Tribunals.

For five years, I was forced to suffer the degradation of existing, legally, on Welfare in answer to Ontario’s inhumane bottom line. So many times I clung to the end of that proverbial rope. I feel as I have been raped and left to die by those who I was supposed to be able to trust. I can almost understand why certain degraded and bullied members of (or outcasts from) society find it fashionable to wear explosive devices into public places.

Not really an Ontario problem, but one that further wore me into despondency, were the ladies who shuffled me off because I was on Welfare. I presented no opportunities for expensive dates or gifts. I was in pain a lot. I had to go to doctors. I was stressing over living hand-to-mouth. What did I really offer?

My third application was rejected in February 2004. There was no response within the usual ten days it takes for someone to pick up the paper, feel its weight, and go “no” in an Internal Review. By then, heart issues, noted in that very first application, were creeping into my everyday life.

Early in March 2004, I went into Sudbury Memorial Hospital for an angiogram. While they were mining for a vein (why do they never go for the good ones?) I went out on them. It’s not the first time it’s happened. This time a full cardiac arrest was well observed by some highly qualified people!

I got my poetic justice when ODSP approved me. May 26, I was determined to be disabled as defined – blah-blah-blah. It was back dated to October 1, 2003 – the date Harris got the boot – but I can’t claim what they’ve ripped me off for since February 1999. With a conservative one percent monthly interest (OW payments deducted, of course) I figure Ontario beat me for $23503.97!

I have evidence of fraud conducted by the Disability Adjudication Unit at ODSP. I have evidence of fraud conducted by WCB. I have evidence of collusion between employers and the Province, and what good is any of it to me? How can I take a province to court when I need their permission to do so? Even if I get that, I have to stand before a province-paid judge, with provincially-sponsored legal representation, in a province-heated courtroom so the Province can stand in judgement of itself.

Is there some kind of irony in that in order to be deemed disabled by Ontario, I had to apply three times, attend two Tribunals – and die once? Justice? I doubt it!