The letter says no. You have read it three times and you still could not say exactly what was refused, or what you are supposed to do about it, or by when.
A denial is a decision rather than the end of a claim, and every province and territory provides a route to challenge it. Do four things on the day the letter arrives. Write the date it reached you on the letter itself, because some limits run from receipt and you are the only person who knows that date. Work out whether it refuses one treatment or stops a benefit you are already receiving. Find the limit that applies where you live, since it usually runs from the refusal rather than from the injury. Then ask for help, which is free for workers compensation claims in every province and territory except Quebec.
A denial letter is a written decision refusing, reducing or stopping something you claimed. It is not a closed file and it is not a final word. It opens a defined period in which the decision can be challenged, and that period is almost always shorter than people assume.
What should you do the day a denial letter arrives?
Four things, and none of them commit you to anything.
Write the date it arrived on the letter. Not the date printed on it. The day it reached your hands or your inbox. Some limits run from the date of the decision and some from when you received it, and nobody else can prove the second one.
Keep it, whatever it says. Nothing goes in the bin, including letters that look long expired. The reason is further down this page and it is worth reading before you throw anything away.
Read it for four facts. What exactly was refused. The reason given. The date of the decision. Whether the letter tells you how to dispute it and by when.
Do not answer it the same day. A telephone call made while you are angry is not a dispute, does not stop any clock and often ends up summarized in a file note you never see.
Is a denied treatment plan the same as a stopped benefit?
No, and people conflate them constantly because both arrive as a letter saying no.
A denied treatment plan refuses one specific thing that was proposed. A block of physiotherapy. An assessment. A piece of equipment. Your other benefits carry on. What is at stake is that item, and the letter often points to an assessment that reached a different conclusion from your own provider's.
A stopped or terminated benefit ends something you were already receiving. Wage replacement ending. Attendant or personal care ending. Treatment funding closing altogether. The money stops, usually on a stated date, and the effect on a household is immediate.
Work out which one you are holding before you do anything else. They can carry different routes, different limits and very different urgency, and treating them as the same problem is how people put the urgent one at the bottom of the pile.
When does the clock start after a denial?
Usually at the refusal rather than at the injury, and that catches almost everyone.
People assume a limitation period runs from the date they were hurt. In most injury benefit systems the relevant clock starts when a benefit is refused, which can be a year or more after the injury. That is good news and it is also a trap, because it means a letter you received quietly last spring may have started something you did not know was running.
Two further points hold almost everywhere. Writing back repeatedly does not reset the clock, because there is no rolling deadline that restarts each time you ask again. And a limit that has passed is not always fatal, since most systems allow an extension in defined circumstances.
Ontario is the worked example rather than the rule. A denied accident benefit must be disputed within 2 years of the insurer's refusal, under section 56 of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule. A WSIB decision carries 30 days for return to work, work transition, labour market re-entry and re-employment decisions and 6 months for everything else, under section 120 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act.
Those numbers are Ontario's. Every province and territory sets its own, and the limits for auto and for workers compensation are different from each other inside the same province. Your Provincial or Territorial Companion Guide carries the limits, the forms and the appeal route that apply where you live. Look yours up the same week the letter arrives rather than the week you decide to act.
Who can help you for free after a claim is denied?
More people than most injured Canadians realize, and the help is genuinely free rather than free at first.
For a workers compensation denial, almost every jurisdiction funds a worker adviser or advocate office. These are independent of the board, they cost nothing, and their whole job is helping injured workers understand and appeal decisions. The names differ.
- British Columbia, the Workers' Advisers Office
- Alberta, the Advisor Office
- Saskatchewan, the Office of the Worker's Advocate
- Manitoba, the Worker Advisor Office
- Ontario, the Office of the Worker Adviser
- New Brunswick, the Office of Workers' Advocates
- Nova Scotia, the Workers' Advisers Program
- Prince Edward Island, the Office of Worker Advisor
- Yukon, the Workers' Advocate Office
Quebec is the exception. There is no workers advocacy office there, and the province offers legal aid services instead. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety maintains a current national list of these offices with contact details.
If you belong to a union, your union does this work too, and it does it for members regardless of the province.
For an auto insurance denial, a worker adviser cannot help you. That is the single most useful sentence in this section. Their mandate is workers compensation only. An accident benefits denial goes to a personal injury lawyer, and most offer a free first conversation and work on contingency, meaning the fee comes from a settlement rather than out of your pocket now.
What is different about an auto denial and a workers compensation denial?
Different decision makers, different tribunals, different limits and different help. The only thing they share is the letter.
An auto denial comes from an insurer, whether that is a private company or a provincial public insurer. Disputes go to a provincial body set up for the purpose, and lawyers are the usual route to representation.
A workers compensation denial comes from a board. Most systems require an internal objection or review first, before any independent appeals tribunal will look at it, and skipping that step wastes the limit rather than shortening the process.
One person can be inside both at once. If you were hurt in a collision while working, both systems are engaged and both can issue letters, on different clocks, about different things. Two denials in the same month can be two entirely separate problems.
Can a denial letter itself be defective?
Yes, and this is the part almost nobody knows.
A denial is generally expected to be clear and unequivocal, and in some systems it has to tell you plainly that you have a right to dispute it and how. Where a denial falls short of what the law requires of it, the clock may never have started running at all.
That is why nothing goes in the bin. A letter from four years ago, which you assumed was final and long out of time, may not have done what it needed to do. Only a lawyer or an adviser reading the actual letter can tell you whether it did, and the specific requirements differ by jurisdiction and by which system issued it.
What should you do if the deadline looks like it has passed?
Ask rather than assume. This is where people give up quietly, and it is where the answer is least obvious from the letter alone.
Most systems allow a limit to be extended where there are reasonable grounds. Extensions are not a formality and they are not nothing. What they are is a written request, made as early as you can manage, explaining plainly why the time passed.
Take the letter to your worker adviser office if it is a compensation claim, or to a personal injury lawyer if it is an auto claim. Both will tell you in one conversation whether there is anything left to do, and both cost nothing to ask.
What are you allowed to do after a denial?
You are allowed to ask for the decision in writing and to ask which provision or policy it rests on.
You are allowed to ask for a copy of everything the decision relied on, including any assessment or report.
You are allowed to ask your own treating providers to comment on a report that was written about you by someone who met you once.
You are allowed to dispute one decision while continuing to receive other benefits.
You are allowed to ask for an extension of a limit that has passed, in writing, giving your reasons.
You are allowed to bring someone with you to any meeting about it and to take notes while you are there.
What should you record when a denial letter arrives?
Eight things, and the two people always forget are the two a lawyer looks for first.
- The date the letter arrived, written on the letter itself
- The date printed on the decision
- Exactly what was refused, reduced or stopped, in the letter's own words
- The reason given
- Whether the letter told you that you have a right to dispute it
- Whether it told you how to dispute it and by when
- What it relied on, such as an assessment, a report or a surveillance finding
- Every call you make about it, with the date, the name of the person and what was said
Items five and six are the ones nobody thinks to note, and they are what decides whether your time ever started.
The National MVA Recovery Guide and the National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide each hold the record a dispute is eventually built from, being the symptoms, the appointments, the calls and the costs. Your Provincial or Territorial Companion Guide holds the part this article deliberately does not, which is the exact limit, the exact form and the exact appeal body where you live. A denial is answered with a deadline and a record, and the two guides hold one each.
Find the guide built for your situation
Every province and territory sets its own limits and its own appeal route. Your Companion Guide carries yours.
Built for injured people.
Read next
- How to Read a Denial Letter and What to Do Next
- What to Do After a Car Accident in Canada
- What to Do After a Workplace Injury in Canada
Last verified August 2026. Worker adviser and advocate offices are listed by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, and eligibility varies between jurisdictions. The Ontario figures cited are section 56 of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule and section 120 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, and they apply in Ontario only. Every province and territory sets its own limits, appeal bodies and extension rules for both auto and workers compensation claims, so confirm yours before relying on anything here. Limitation periods are decided on the facts of an individual claim. Hurt Square Companion Guides are tools for documenting your own recovery. They are not legal, medical or insurance advice, and a denial you intend to dispute is worth a conversation with an adviser or a lawyer.