What is the Minor Injury Guideline?
A cap. If your insurer decides your injuries are predominantly minor, your medical and rehabilitation benefits stop at $3,500 in total.
That is set by section 18 subsection 1 of the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule, Ontario Regulation 34/10. Physiotherapy, chiropractic, assessments and imaging all come out of the same $3,500.
Outside the guideline the standard limit is $65,000, combining medical, rehabilitation and attendant care, or $1,000,000 where the impairment is catastrophic. Higher limits can be bought. What changed on 1 July 2026 is not those figures but what else comes in a policy at all, starting with whether you can claim lost wages.
What counts as a minor injury?
Seven things, and the list is closed. Section 3 subsection 1 of the same regulation defines a minor injury as one or more of these:
- a sprain
- a strain
- a whiplash associated disorder
- a contusion
- an abrasion
- a laceration
- a subluxation
It also takes in what the regulation calls clinically associated sequelae, meaning symptoms that follow from one of those. Headaches after a whiplash strain, for instance.
Look at what is not on that list. Fractures. Concussions. Disc herniations. Torn ligaments. Psychological injuries. None of them is a minor injury under this definition, whatever anybody tells you on the phone.
How do I get out of the Minor Injury Guideline?
Two ways, and they are not the same argument.
Your injury is not on the list. If you have something the definition does not cover, the guideline does not apply to you at all. That is a question about what you were diagnosed with rather than about how badly you are affected.
The Divisional Court made that distinction in Marcelo v The Personal Insurance Company, 2026 ONSC 974. A CT scan on the day of the accident confirmed a brain contusion. The insurer put her in the guideline anyway and the Licence Appeal Tribunal agreed. The court overturned it, holding that the Tribunal had erred by looking at the degree of impairment when the regulation defines a minor injury rather than a minor impairment.
A pre-existing condition stops you recovering inside the cap. Section 18 subsection 2 allows removal where your health practitioner determines, and provides compelling evidence, that a documented condition would prevent you reaching maximum recovery within $3,500.
Compelling evidence goes in on the OCF-18 Treatment and Assessment Plan with the medical documentation attached. Having the condition is not enough. The evidence has to show it blocks your recovery.
Why do two people with the same injuries end up in different places?
The records, which is a harder answer than most people expect.
Three months after the Divisional Court released Marcelo, the Licence Appeal Tribunal decided Ibrahim v Intact Insurance Company, 2026 CanLII 56648, on 9 June 2026. She argued that pre-existing migraines and other conditions stood in the way of her recovery. She relied on her own testimony, her family doctor's records and her physiotherapy notes. She stayed in the guideline and lost every benefit she had claimed.
One woman had a CT scan taken the day of the accident. The other had notes that did not carry her case.
That is not a comment on either of them. It is what the decision is made from. The adjudicator reads the file.
What should I be documenting from the start?
The things a MIG dispute is decided on, and most of them cannot be recreated later.
- Every symptom, from the first day. What hurts, how much, what it stops you doing. A record written the same week outweighs a memory reconstructed at a hearing.
- Anything you had before the accident. Old conditions are the second route out of the guideline, and they only work where they are documented. Your own history is evidence.
- Every appointment and every finding. The date, who you saw, what they diagnosed, what imaging was done and what it showed.
- What you cannot do now that you could do before. At work and at home, with dates rather than impressions.
- Every denial letter and its date. The date on the letter starts the clock for disputing it.
Somebody in the first week after a crash is not thinking about a tribunal eighteen months away. That is exactly why the file is usually thin when it finally matters.
Where this fits with the rest of your claim
If your benefits have already been refused, the deadlines for disputing it are on Ontario accident benefit deadlines. The Licence Appeal Tribunal is where those disputes are heard, and Tribunals Ontario lists the governing rules on its laws, rules and decisions page.
If an assessment has been arranged, what happens at one is set out in what happens at an independent medical examination.
If you are off work, whether anything replaces your income is now a separate question with its own answer: can you claim lost wages after a car accident in Ontario.
Hurt outside Ontario? Alberta and the three Maritime provinces cap pain and suffering rather than treatment, which is a different limit doing a different job: Alberta, which carries the lowest figure in the country and changes system in 2027, and Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
If your crash was only days ago, none of this starts until your insurer knows you intend to claim, and reporting the accident alone doesn't do that: the one sentence to say on your first call.
And if you are at the start rather than in a dispute, how to document injuries after a car accident is where to begin.
Every figure on this page comes from a named authority. How we check
Last verified: September 2026.
