You are hurt, your income has suddenly become a question, and somebody has handed you a form. Most advice you find online quietly assumes you work in Ontario. You may not.
Four steps apply after a workplace injury anywhere in Canada. Get medical care and tell the provider that the injury happened at work. Report it to your employer immediately. File your own claim with the compensation board where you work rather than relying on the employer report. Start a dated record the same day. Everything after those four steps is decided where you work, because Canada runs thirteen workers compensation jurisdictions served by twelve boards, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut sharing one between them.
Workers compensation is a no fault system. You do not have to prove anyone was to blame in order to receive benefits, and in exchange you generally cannot sue your employer over the injury. That trade is the same everywhere in the country. Almost nothing else is.
Which board handles your workplace injury claim in Canada?
Find yours before you do anything else, because the board decides the forms, the limits and the language everyone will use around you.
- Ontario, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, known as the WSIB
- British Columbia, WorkSafeBC
- Alberta, the Workers' Compensation Board Alberta
- Saskatchewan, the Workers' Compensation Board Saskatchewan
- Manitoba, the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba
- Quebec, the Commission des normes, de l'équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, known as the CNESST
- New Brunswick, WorkSafeNB
- Nova Scotia, the Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia
- Prince Edward Island, the Workers Compensation Board of Prince Edward Island
- Newfoundland and Labrador, WorkplaceNL
- Yukon, the Yukon Workers' Safety and Compensation Board
- Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission, known as the WSCC, which serves both territories
Where your work regularly crosses provincial borders, as it does for long haul drivers, you may be entitled to file in more than one jurisdiction and be required to choose between them. That choice carries its own deadline and cannot usually be undone, and it is set out in which claim and which province applies to injured truck drivers.
How quickly must you report a workplace injury?
The same day wherever you can manage it. Delay is the most common way a straightforward claim becomes a contested one, and it costs nothing to report early.
Two reports usually exist. Your employer files theirs, and you file your own. In Ontario the employer has three business days from learning about the injury and the worker has six months from the date of injury. Those two figures are Ontario figures. Every jurisdiction sets its own.
File your own claim regardless of what your employer says they have done. Where only one report exists, the account inside it becomes the account of what happened.
What deadlines apply after a workplace injury in Canada?
Different ones in every jurisdiction, and the limits on objecting to a decision are usually shorter than people assume.
Ontario is the worked example. Section 120 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act gives you 30 days to object to a decision about return to work, work transition, labour market re-entry or re-employment. Everything else carries 6 months, including entitlement, loss of earnings, health care and permanent impairment. A separate 21 day limit applies to objecting to your medical information being released to your employer.
Do not carry those numbers across a border. Find yours below.
Deadlines where you work
If a decision has already gone against you, the clock you are on started at that decision rather than at the injury. What to do when an injury claim is denied in Canada covers the steps that apply with any board and names the free worker adviser office in each province and territory.
How much do workers compensation benefits pay?
Wage replacement is calculated on net earnings rather than gross, because the benefit itself is not taxed. The percentage and the earnings ceiling both differ by jurisdiction.
In Ontario the rate is 85% of pre-injury net average earnings, on earnings up to a 2026 maximum of $121,700, and that ceiling is adjusted every January. Other boards set their own rate and their own ceiling, and several pay a higher percentage than Ontario does. How much workers compensation pays in Canada sets out every 2026 rate and ceiling in one table, including the one jurisdiction that calculates on gross rather than net. Check your own board rather than assuming the Ontario figure travels.
Two things are broadly consistent. Health care related to the injury is covered, and a permanent impairment left after recovery is compensated separately from lost wages. What that permanent impairment payment is called and how it is worked out varies considerably.
How does returning to work happen after an injury?
Your board and your employer will start talking about modified or gradual return to work, usually sooner than you expect. That can be genuinely good for recovery, and it depends entirely on whether the plan matches what your body can do.
Read any plan against your actual capacity rather than your hopes. A plan you cannot sustain tends to end in a second injury or a report that you declined suitable work. If a task is beyond you, say so at the time and in writing rather than after you have tried and failed.
What are you allowed to do after a workplace injury?
You are allowed to file your own claim whether or not your employer has filed theirs.
You are allowed to say that a task in a return to work plan is beyond you, at the moment you are asked to do it.
You are allowed to report a new or worsening symptom at any point in the claim.
You are allowed to ask for any decision in writing and to ask which provision it rests on.
You are allowed to bring someone with you to an appointment or a meeting and to take notes while you are there.
What should you record after a workplace injury in Canada?
Six things, and they carry across every jurisdiction even though nothing else does.
- The injury itself. Date, time, location, what you were doing, how it happened, who saw it and who you told first.
- The reporting trail. When you told your employer and to whom, when you filed your own claim and your claim number once it arrives.
- Symptoms, daily. What hurts, where, how badly on a scale you use consistently, how you slept and what you could not manage that day.
- Appointments. Date, provider, what was discussed, what was recommended and any limits set on your activity.
- Contact with the board and your employer. Date, the name of the person, what was said, what was agreed and what was refused. They log every call. Log yours.
- Money. Days missed, hours reduced, every covered job you hold, prescriptions, equipment, travel and parking.
The National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide holds all six and works with any board in the country. Your provincial Companion Guide holds the part that does not travel, which is the board, the forms, the limits and the appeal route where you work. Most people need both, because a careful daily record filed after a deadline still fails.
Keep your claim in one place
The National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide covers what applies across Canada. Your Companion Guide from The Way Back series adds the board, the forms and the deadlines where you work.
Read next
- How Much Does Workers Compensation Pay in Canada?
- Injured Truck Drivers in Canada: Which Claim and Which Province?
- What Happens at a Functional Abilities Evaluation
Last verified August 2026. Deadlines and benefit figures cited in detail are Ontario provisions under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act and do not apply elsewhere. Every province and territory sets its own limits, rates and ceilings through its own board, and those are amended from time to time, so confirm the current position where you work before relying on it. Hurt Square Companion Guides are tools for documenting your own recovery. They are not legal, medical or insurance advice.