What Should Be Obvious
There is a concept in law — and in basic human reasoning — that some conclusions should not require a fight. When the facts are clear, when the circumstances are unambiguous, when any fair-minded person looking at the situation would arrive at the same place without much effort, we sometimes describe that outcome as prima facie. Self-evident. Axiomatic. A conclusion that flows naturally from the evidence without needing to be argued into existence.
I want to talk about what happens when the system loses sight of that.
We recently won an important appeal at the Alberta Appeals Commission on behalf of a client. I want to tell you about that win, what it means, and why it matters; not just for him, but for injured workers across this province.
The Worker
Our client is not a young man. He is approaching retirement age. He has spent his working life doing physical work — the kind of work that wears a body down over decades. He does not have a long list of office credentials. He does not have a background in sedentary, computer-based employment. His hands — his tools — have been seriously damaged.
In October 2017, he was injured at work. The Workers’ Compensation Board accepted his claim. Over the following years, his compensable conditions were assessed, expanded, and documented in detail. By early 2022, WCB had formally recognized that he had a permanent clinical impairment rating of 14.09% of the whole body — a significant number representing real, lasting, measurable damage. He was discharged from return-to-work services with significant permanent restrictions on lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, coordination, and driving.
But beyond the compensable conditions, there was a broader picture. Our client walks with a cane or walker. He has developed arthritis in his hands. He has significant problems with his hips, knees, and back. He has cardiac issues that require him to avoid high-stress work. He experiences vertigo. He has a history of stomach cancer. And at the time of our appeal, his cancer had recurred. He was actively undergoing cancer treatment. He was, by any objective measure, very ill and very frail.
It was nonetheless decided that he was employable as WCB’s favourite, one-size-fits-all job lead: dispatcher.
The Decision WCB Made
In October 2023, WCB determined that our client’s Economic Loss Payment — the ongoing wage-loss benefit he receives because he can no longer work — should be calculated based on what a dispatcher earns. Not based on what he was actually earning. Not based on any real job he had obtained. Based on the theory that he could earn dispatcher wages, so his benefits should be reduced accordingly.
This is a mechanism WCB uses called estimated earning capacity or deemed employability. The logic is straightforward enough in principle: if a worker can realistically earn income in a suitable occupation, WCB can estimate that capacity and reduce ongoing wage-loss benefits accordingly. It is a legitimate tool when used properly.
The problem is the word suitable.
Dispatcher is a real job. It exists. It appears in the National Occupational Classification database. It has a wage rate attached to it. On paper, it is sedentary — no heavy lifting, no manual labour. And so WCB pointed at it and said: this is where you land.
But suitable does not mean sedentary. Suitable means consistent with the worker’s ability, assessed on the basis of his physical, vocational, social, psychological, and practical circumstances. That is what WCB policy actually requires.
We appealed.
What the Appeals Commission Found
The hearing panel heard this appeal on April 28, 2026. They issued their decision on May 25, 2026.
They agreed with us.
The panel found that the position of dispatcher was not suitable to estimate our client’s post-accident earnings. The reason was straightforward: the position of dispatcher requires a lifting ability of up to 5 kilograms or 11 pounds. Our client’s permanent restrictions limit his ability to carry to as little as 4 pounds rarely and 2 pounds occasionally, and his lifting ability to 8 pounds rarely and 5 pounds occasionally. His physical restrictions already fell short of even that basic physical demand of the job. The panel found the job physically unsuitable on the evidence.
But the panel went further than that. And this is the part I want every injured worker, and every advocate in this space, to pay close attention to.
The panel found that the full extent of our client’s work restrictions had never been properly assessed. They noted that the restrictions established back in 2020 did not include any evaluation of his mobility, his ability to walk, sit, or stand, or the impact of the arthritis in his hands. They cited Patrus v. Alberta (Workers’ Compensation), 2014 ABCA 117, confirming that an Economic Loss Payment must be determined on a whole person basis — taking into account all compensable and non-compensable conditions that affect real-world employability.
The formal direction at the end of the decision states:
“We direct that the worker be re-assessed to determine the entirety of his work restrictions on a whole person basis.”
That direction matters enormously. Let me explain why.
Why This Has Been a Fight Worth Having
For years, there’s been tension around how whole-person assessment applies at different levels of the WCB system.
At the internal review level, we often see a pattern where non-compensable conditions are treated as largely irrelevant to the employability analysis. The logic, stated plainly, goes something like this: WCB is only responsible for the compensable injury, so why should unrelated medical conditions change the employability picture?
It is worth being clear about what whole-person assessment does and does not mean. It does not mean WCB becomes responsible for every medical condition a worker has. WCB is not suddenly on the hook for cancer treatment, arthritis medication, or cardiac care just because a worker also has a compensable injury. Those are separate questions entirely. What whole-person assessment means is that when WCB is deciding whether a worker is realistically employable, those conditions are still relevant. They affect stamina. They affect mobility. They affect reliability and attendance. They affect whether a worker can actually compete for and sustain a job in the real labour market. You cannot fairly assess employability by pretending those realities do not exist.
That reasoning — strip out everything except the compensable condition and call the remaining person employable — sounds tidy. In practice, it produces wildly unfair outcomes.
Employers do not hire compensable injuries. They hire people. A worker does not walk into a job interview as a discrete set of accepted WCB diagnoses with all other human realities neatly bracketed out. They walk in as themselves — with their age, their full medical history, their physical capacity, their stamina, their mobility, their ability to handle stress, their cognitive capacity, their energy levels, and every other real-world factor that determines whether they can actually do the job.
When WCB strips all of that away and reduces the employability analysis to the compensable condition in isolation, the result is not a fair assessment. It is a fiction. And that fiction can cost injured workers thousands of dollars a year in benefits, benefits they’re entitled to because of the real, complete, whole-person disability they actually live with.
This Appeals Commission decision pushes back against that fiction in language that is unusually clear and direct.
What It Means for Other Workers
This is not just a win for our client. It is an important Appeals Commission decision — highly persuasive tribunal authority — and one that other workers and advocates should be citing wherever WCB is trying to deem an older, medically complicated, physically limited worker employable in a theoretical occupation that does not reflect their actual labour market reality.
In particular, watch for these patterns:
WCB identifies a “sedentary” job like dispatcher, clerical work, customer service, call centre, or security monitoring — and treats the word sedentary as though it solves the suitability problem. It does not. Suitability requires the full picture.
WCB treats non-compensable conditions as irrelevant because they are not accepted under the claim. But as this decision confirms, the test is not whether WCB caused the condition. The test is whether the worker, as they actually exist, can compete in the real labour market. Non-compensable conditions that affect stamina, mobility, reliability, or any other aspect of real-world employability are part of that analysis — even if WCB bears no responsibility for treating them.
WCB relies on theoretical accommodations or technology to argue that a job is accessible. The existence of voice recognition software does not make a computer-based job suitable for a worker who cannot reliably use their hands. Theory is not reality.
WCB points to an occupational profile and a wage number and calls it a day. A suitable job lead must be grounded in the worker’s actual presentation — their age, their work history, their education, their stamina, their health, their practical capacity to obtain and sustain that employment in a competitive marketplace.
Back to What Should Be Obvious
I said at the outset that some conclusions should be self-evident.
Looking at our client i.e., his age, his physical injuries, his mobility limitations, his cardiac restrictions, his arthritis, his cancer, his frailty, his work history, his transferable skill set, and the conclusion that he isn’t competitively employable in any real occupation should not have required years of fighting, a formal appeal, and a panel of three commissioners to state the obvious.
It should have been decided that way from the beginning.
It was not. And so we fought for it.
We’re we did. And we will keep fighting for workers like him — workers whose real circumstances the system sometimes seems determined to ignore.
Blue Collar Consulting represents injured workers across Alberta in WCB appeals and advocacy. If WCB has told you that you are employable in a job that doesn’t reflect your real situation, contact us. That decision may be worth challenging.
