Nunavut WSCC Appeals and Claim Reviews

How a work injury claim is reviewed and appealed in Nunavut. Free. No email required. For anyone injured at work.

Nunavut shares its workers compensation system with the Northwest Territories. One commission, one Review Committee, one Appeals Tribunal. What that means in practice, and what almost nobody tells you at the start, is that the body making the final decision on your claim is not in Nunavut.

Where is your appeal actually decided?

In Yellowknife, in another territory. The Review Committee is internal to WSCC and can maintain, reverse or change your case manager's decision. The Appeals Tribunal is independent of WSCC, is the second and final level, and is based in the Precambrian Building on 52nd Street in Yellowknife.

That is not a complaint about the system. It is a planning fact. If you live in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay or any of the smaller communities, walking into the room is not a realistic default. Your appeal will very likely be decided by people reading, not by people listening.

Everything else on this page follows from that one fact.

Written hearing or in person, and how do you choose?

You can request either, and the tribunal will usually schedule the type you request. It normally sits as a single member, though the chairperson can appoint a panel of three.

A written hearing is decided entirely from the documents. Which means anything you did not write down does not exist for that purpose. No one will ask you a follow up question, notice that you seemed to be in pain, or draw out the detail you forgot to include.

If you choose a written hearing, and many Nunavummiut reasonably will, then the written submission is the entire appeal. Give it the time you would have given a day in a hearing room.

You are entitled to a copy of your claim file at any time. Request it in writing using the Request for Disclosure form, return it to your case manager, and WSCC emails a link to a PDF. Do this before you write anything, because the file is what the tribunal is reading.

Can you deal with your claim in Inuktut?

Ask, and get the answer in writing. The Official Languages Act of Nunavut recognizes Inuktut, English and French, and gives Nunavummiut the right to communicate with and receive services from territorial institutions, the Legislative Assembly, the courts and municipalities in the official language of their choice. The Inuktut Protection Act sits alongside it.

WSCC is the complication, and we would rather say so than guess. It is one commission operating across two territories under two separate statutes, with a language regime in Nunavut that recognizes three official languages and one in the Northwest Territories that recognizes eleven. We are not going to tell you exactly what WSCC owes you in Inuktut, because we have not confirmed it. Ask WSCC in Iqaluit and ask the Appeals Tribunal, separately, and keep their answers.

If you are told something is not available in Inuktut and you think it should be, the Office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut is the place that question goes.

One practical point either way. If you write your own account of the injury in Inuktut, keep that original. A translated version is a second document, not a replacement, and the original is evidence of what you said and when you said it.

Who pays when you travel south for treatment?

On an accepted claim, WSCC does. If WSCC asks you to do something, such as see a doctor, you receive pay for the time away from work and related expenses including travel.

This is the part people get wrong, and in Nunavut it gets expensive fast. Government of Nunavut medical travel is a payer of last resort. Its own eligibility rules require that you have used up all other third party and employer insurance options, or have no plan at all. An accepted WSCC claim is exactly that kind of plan. Booking a work injury trip through the health route and sorting it out later is how people end up arguing about a bill months afterward.

Where you are sent depends on your region. Qikiqtaaluk generally travels to Ottawa, Kivalliq to Winnipeg or Churchill, Kitikmeot to Yellowknife or Edmonton. Each has its own boarding home and its own patient referral office, so the people you deal with on the way down are not the people handling your claim.

Say the words "WSCC claim" to whoever books the travel, and ask in writing which body is paying. Then keep everything. Boarding passes, boarding home paperwork, meal receipts, escort details and the dates of every leg. A single trip south can involve three flights, two overnight stops and a week away, and none of it reconstructs from memory six months later.

Who helps you for free in Nunavut?

The Workers' Advisor Office, which is the only workers' advisor office in Canada covering two jurisdictions. It is free, it will obtain your WSCC file on your behalf, and it will come to the appeal with you to explain your case.

Call them before you need them. They will take a first call at any stage, including before you have filled in the claim forms, and distance is not a barrier to a phone call the way it is to a hearing.

They can also decline. If there are no grounds to take a case further, for example where there is no objective medical evidence or no statutory entitlement, they will say so after reviewing the file. That is worth knowing rather than taking as a rejection.

If the tribunal is the end, what is actually left?

Very little, and it is narrow rather than nothing. The Workers' Compensation Act restricts challenges to a denial of natural justice or an excess of jurisdiction. In Nunavut those go to the Nunavut Court of Justice, which is a different court from the one that would hear the same argument in the Northwest Territories.

The Nunavut Court of Justice considered exactly this in 2025 and applied that restriction. The point is not that the door is shut. It is that the door is a narrow one about process and power, not about whether the tribunal weighed your evidence correctly.

Which is the argument for doing the work early. A process argument is much harder to build than a good file was.

Were you injured in a vehicle while working?

Then the road accident side applies as well, and it works differently in the North than the rest of Canada. Our territories car accident page explains why the two year limitation rule published everywhere else may not be yours.

Keeping the record these decisions depend on

A written hearing decided in another territory, with no court behind it that will look at the facts again. Everything the people deciding your claim will ever know about your injury is whatever reached the file.

Two things decide how an injury claim goes. What you wrote down and whether you did the right thing at the right time for where you live. The National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide handles the first, the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs that a claim is eventually judged on. The Nunavut Workplace Injury Companion Guide handles the second, the deadlines on this page and the forms, boards and appeal routes behind them. People who have only one tend to end up with a careful record aimed at the wrong process, or the right dates and nothing to put in front of them.

Your Recovery. Documented. Protected.

See the Nunavut Workplace Injury Companion Guide

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This page is general information for people in Nunavut. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by jurisdiction and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with the Workers' Advisor Office or WSCC.