Ontario WSIB Claim Deadlines
The dates that govern a WSIB claim in Ontario. Free. No email required. For anyone injured at work.
Ontario takes away most rights to sue over a work injury and puts WSIB in their place. It does not take away all of them. Where a right to sue survives, section 30 gives you three months to choose between the two systems, and that clock runs from the accident rather than from any decision.
THE TEN CLOCKS
Five of the ten run out inside your first month, and the first one belongs to your employer. Not drawn to scale.
Inside the first month Longer, but they start now
They do not all count from the same event. One runs from the accident. Several run from the day a letter reached you. One runs from a form WSIB asks you to complete, and one of them treats saying nothing as a decision you have made. Everything below sets out what starts each clock, and what to write down at the moment it matters.
What is the three month election in Ontario?
A choice between claiming benefits and suing, made on a form. It arises where somebody outside the workers' compensation system is responsible for your injury, which in practice is often a driver. Section 30(1) applies where you are entitled to WSIB benefits and are also entitled to bring an action against someone over the same injury. Section 30(2) says you elect and notify WSIB. WSIB decides which election form to send you, based on the type of accident and whether your employer is in Schedule 1 or Schedule 2.
Section 30(4) sets the limit. The election has to be made within three months after the accident, or within three months after the date of death. It runs from the accident rather than from any decision, which makes it the one deadline on this page that is already running while you are still working out what happened to you.
Doing nothing is not neutral here. Where no election is made, you are deemed to have elected not to receive benefits.
That is section 30(6), and it is the part to read twice. Where no election is made, or notice of the election is not given, you are deemed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to have elected not to receive benefits under the insurance plan. Silence is treated as a choice, and it is treated as the choice that ends your claim.
The claim and the election are two different forms with two different clocks. The claim has six months. The election has three. WSIB's own policy is that it expects both at the same time, precisely because the shorter one governs.
Until both are in, no benefits are provided beyond the initial payment.
The extension exists. WSIB can extend the three month limit to return the election form, and requests go in writing to its Legal Services. That is a different office from the one handling your claim, so asking your case manager is not the same as asking.
Changing your mind is discretionary, not a right. Where you sign an election form and receive benefits, there is no statutory right to withdraw the claim and sue instead. WSIB may permit a withdrawal, and requests are made in writing to Legal Services.
How long do I have to file a WSIB claim in Ontario?
Six months, and it is two requirements rather than one. Section 22 sets the six months. You meet it by filing a claim, normally the Form 6, and by consenting to the disclosure of your functional abilities information, which you can do on the Form 6, on the Functional Abilities Form or on a Form REO6.
Filing without consenting does not satisfy the requirement. WSIB issues one payment of up to two weeks of loss of earnings benefits without them, then nothing further until both arrive.
For an injury that came on gradually, the date is yours to establish. For an occupational disease the six months runs from learning of the disease. For a disablement, a condition that emerges over time, WSIB runs the six months from the date you report it as work-related, which you can do to your employer, to a health professional or to WSIB.
The Act itself counts from the accident, so the safe working date is the day you first connected your symptoms to your work. Write that date down. It is one only you can establish.
Do not wait the six months. Your employer files a Form 7 and your health professional files a Form 8, and your claim is decided on how the three fit together. Filing late means the other two were written without your version alongside them.
If the injured person is under sixteen, a parent, guardian or the Children's Lawyer has to countersign the consent. At sixteen or seventeen no countersignature is required.
What happens if I missed the six month claim deadline?
There is relief, and WSIB names the factors it weighs. It may extend the deadline or waive the requirements where in its opinion it is just to do so. The exceptional circumstances it lists are compelling personal reasons such as serious health problems affecting you or your immediate family, or leaving the province or country because of a family member's illness or death; whether you were able to understand the time limit and the consequences of missing it, including whether your workplace told you about the requirement and whether language was a factor; and whether you reported the accident to your employer, a health care professional or co-workers.
That last factor is worth reading carefully. Telling somebody at the time, even informally, is evidence that counts later.
Several thirty day clocks sit behind the six months. Where WSIB sends you a Form 6 because it has decided you are now well enough to complete one, or because a change in law or policy has opened entitlement, you get thirty calendar days from receiving it, or the balance of the six months, whichever is greater. Miss that and no further benefits are provided.
One more route opens from outside. Where the tribunal rules that you have no right to sue a third party, the deadline for filing your WSIB claim is six months from that decision, not six months from the accident that is by then long past.
My employer never reported my injury. Is it too late to claim?
Their reporting duty is not your deadline. Section 21(1) requires an employer to notify WSIB within three days of learning of an accident where it needs health care or leaves you unable to earn full wages. That is the fastest clock on this page and it is the only one that runs against somebody else. Your six months is unaffected by whether they met it.
Where your employer never reported it, WSIB accepts a claim past the six months if Stakeholder Compliance Services determines the employer created a coercive workplace environment that led you to forgo benefits.
Once that determination is made you have thirty days to file. That is a short window at the end of a long process, so have the Form 6 ready before the determination arrives.
Whoever you told at the time is part of your record. Whether you reported the accident to your employer, a health care professional or co-workers is one of the factors WSIB weighs on a late claim. A text message to a supervisor, a line in a clinic note, a co-worker who remembers the shift: none of it looked like evidence at the time, and all of it is evidence now.
If your claim were decided tomorrow, what would your file say?
People who were genuinely hurt have lost benefits over a date nobody recorded, a body part left off the first form, or a call nobody wrote down. Caught early that is fixable. A year on it is an argument you have to win. The Ontario Workplace Injury Companion Guide keeps every date on this page in one place, with the form that goes with each and room to write down what actually happened. $24.99, yours to keep.
How long do I have to object to a WSIB decision?
Thirty days or six months, and the thirty day list has three items on it. Section 120 sets thirty days for decisions about return to work, re-employment and labour market re-entry plans, now called return to work plans. Six months applies to everything else, including initial entitlement, loss of earnings, health care, permanent impairment and employer account decisions.
| The decision is about | You have |
|---|---|
| Return to work | 30 days |
| Re-employment | 30 days |
| A labour market re-entry or return to work plan | 30 days |
| Initial entitlement | 6 months |
| Loss of earnings | 6 months |
| Health care | 6 months |
| Permanent impairment | 6 months |
| Your employer's account | 6 months |
| Two decisions with two different limits | 6 months for both |
Read the letter for the words, not the topic. If a decision letter mentions return to work, re-employment, work transition, modified duties or labour market re-entry, treat it as thirty days and act this week.
There is one piece of good news in the rules. Where you are objecting to two decisions carrying two different limits, WSIB defaults to the six month limit for both.
You object with an Intent to Object form, which has to reach WSIB inside the limit stated in the decision letter. WSIB will also accept a letter of objection carrying your name, the claim number, the date of the decision and the issues you disagree with. Either way it asks for your reasons.
The next form has no time limit at all. Once the front-line decision maker has looked at your objection and not changed the decision, you are sent an Appeal Readiness Form, and you return it when you are ready. There is no deadline on it. There is a condition instead: you should only send it once you have gathered everything, resolved any access issues and are available to attend an oral hearing within ninety days.
What happens if I missed the time limit to object?
Write to the front-line decision maker and say why. WSIB publishes the criteria it applies, which means the argument has a shape rather than being a plea. The ones that bear on a worker are whether the decision you received actually gave notice of the time limit, serious health problems affecting you, serious health problems affecting someone in your immediate family, having to leave the province or country because of a family member's illness or death, a condition that prevents you understanding or meeting the limit, anything already on the claim file showing you objected even without submitting the form, and having objected in time to closely related issues so intertwined with this one that the appeal cannot reasonably be resolved without waiving the limit.
A time limit ruling is itself appealable, and it has its own clocks. You start it with an Intent to Object form, and no Appeal Readiness Form is needed. The Appeals Coordinator then writes to the parties giving them thirty days to send in further information. Once that information is in, or the thirty days have passed, the Registrar makes the time limit decision and sends it out within thirty days.
The Registrar is the final WSIB decision maker on time limits. Where an extension is refused, the letter tells you the next steps, including appealing to the tribunal.
Can my employer see my medical file, and how long do I have to stop it?
Twenty one days to give your reasons, and there are three separate twenty one day clocks in this part of the process. Where there is an issue in dispute, section 58(1) requires WSIB to give your employer access to the documents in the file it considers relevant, and to give them copies. Before that happens you get the chance to object to the release of health care information you say is not relevant to decisions about your claim.
You have twenty one days, and you have to provide reasons rather than simply object. If WSIB does not hear from you, it releases the documents.
The second twenty one days. WSIB decides whether the information should be released. Where a party disagrees with that decision, they have twenty one days from it to appeal, and WSIB refers the appeal to the tribunal. Nothing else in your appeal moves until access is resolved.
The third. Later, at the written hearing stage, if the Registrar decides the other side's submission contains new evidence or argument significant enough that you should be able to answer it, you are given twenty one days to reply. Your file goes to an Appeals Resolution Officer when your reply arrives or when the twenty one days pass, whichever happens first.
What you can object to depends on who started the objection. Where you are the one objecting, you can object to health care information you say is not relevant. Where your employer objected to a decision in your claim, you can object to the disclosure of any information in the file, not only health care information.
Twenty one days is three weeks, and it runs whether or not you are well enough to deal with it.
Open every WSIB envelope the day it arrives and write the date on it. Note also that redactions made under section 58 are administrative determinations and are not appealable in themselves.
My claim was denied. How long do I have to appeal to WSIAT?
Six months to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Appeals Tribunal, and the tribunal can allow longer. Once the Appeals Services Division has issued a final decision through an Appeals Resolution Officer, you have six months to submit a Notice of Appeal with that decision attached. Section 125(2) sets six months after the decision or such longer period as the tribunal may permit.
A late appeal is a time extension application, not the end of the matter. The tribunal publishes a practice direction on time extension applications and weighs your explanation for the delay alongside any evidence that you were trying to appeal inside the six months, such as sending the form to WSIB by mistake or calling for information.
Send the Notice of Appeal by a method that gives you a receipt, and keep it.
Before the tribunal there is a reconsideration route, and it has four named criteria. An Appeals Resolution Officer decision is WSIB's final decision, but WSIB will reconsider one where there is a significant defect in the decision or the decision-making process that may reasonably affect the outcome, a failure to properly apply the Act or approved policy, significant new evidence that did not exist when the decision was made, or a typographical error that affects the decision. Requests go in writing first to the Appeals Resolution Officer, then to their Manager, then to the Senior Director of the Appeals Services Division.
The word doing the work there is existed. Evidence that was available at the time but was not handed in does not trigger a reconsideration. Evidence that did not exist does. That distinction is the reason to put everything in before you sign the Appeal Readiness Form rather than after.
The tribunal is not quite the last word either. Its decisions may be reconsidered at its own discretion where a threshold test is met, and beyond that the route is judicial review to the Divisional Court. There is one class of decision the tribunal cannot hear at all: final decisions about rights of action under sections 26 to 30, which includes the election. Those go to the Divisional Court by judicial review.
How long does WSIB have to answer me?
Not every clock runs against you, and knowing the ones that do not is how you tell a delay from a decision. Your employer has three days under section 21(1). The other party in your appeal gets forty five days to complete and return the Respondent Form once they have been given access to the file. Where an oral hearing is allowed it usually takes place within ninety calendar days of the confirmation letter, and an Appeals Resolution Officer usually decides a written hearing within thirty days.
| The step | How long | Whose clock |
|---|---|---|
| Your employer reports the accident to WSIB, section 21(1) | 3 days from learning of it | Theirs |
| The other party returns the Respondent Form | 45 days from being given access | Theirs |
| An Appeals Resolution Officer decides a written hearing | Usually 30 days | Theirs |
| An oral hearing takes place after the confirmation letter | Usually within 90 calendar days | Theirs |
| The Registrar sends out a time limit decision | Within 30 days | Theirs |
| Asking for an interpreter you did not request on the form | At least 14 days before the hearing | Yours |
| Being unavailable to schedule an oral hearing | More than 30 days and WSIB decides whether to withdraw | Yours |
The last two are easy to miss. If you need an interpreter and did not say so on the form, the request has to reach the Coordinator at least fourteen days before the hearing, or the appeal may be withdrawn. If you become unavailable to schedule an oral hearing for reasons beyond your control, WSIB puts the case on administrative hold, and if you are unavailable for more than thirty days it decides whether to withdraw it.
Dates are only half of it. Knowing when something is due does not tell you whether your employer is legally required to give your job back, what happens if you are dismissed within six months of returning or how to record a return to work in a way that survives a dispute.
Recovering after a workplace injury in Ontario covers the whole process and is free to read. Hurt in another province? Start from the guides by province and territory.
I was hurt in a vehicle at work. Does WSIB pay, or the car insurer?
Two systems apply to one injury, and the Act lets your car insurer into the workers' compensation one. Section 28 removes the right to sue any Schedule 1 employer and its directors, officers and workers, and stops a Schedule 2 worker suing their own employer and its people. Section 28(3) narrows that where workers of more than one employer were involved: the bar applies only if those workers were acting in the course of their employment.
Where the person who hurt you sits outside all of that, the right to sue survives, and section 30 puts you back on the three month election at the top of this page.
Somebody else can start this question without you. Section 31(1) lets a party to an action, or an insurer from whom statutory accident benefits are claimed under section 268 of the Insurance Act, apply to the tribunal to determine whether the right to sue is taken away, whether the amount payable is limited, or whether you are entitled to claim WSIB benefits. Section 31(2) gives the tribunal exclusive jurisdiction over it.
In plain terms, the insurer paying your accident benefits can ask a tribunal to rule on whether your lawsuit exists. Where the ruling is that it does not, you then have six months from that decision to file your WSIB claim.
For motor vehicle accidents after 31 October 1996, where a Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 worker signs an election form to receive benefits, WSIB and the Schedule 2 employer have no right to bring an action on the worker's behalf. Where you proceed with an action instead, you may be required to give your automobile insurer an assignment of benefits from WSIB.
The road accident deadlines are separate from everything on this page. Our Ontario car accident deadlines page sets them out, and its first deadline is far shorter than anything here.
What changed in 2026, and did the deadlines change?
The limits above are the ones in the Act, and the Act is where to check them. Three months under section 30(4). Six months under section 22. Thirty days or six months under section 120. Six months under section 125(2). This page was checked in August 2026 against those sections as reproduced in WSIB's Operational Policy Manual, and against WSIB's Appeals Practices and Procedures as updated in July 2026.
What changed is a name rather than a date. Labour market re-entry plans are now called return to work plans. The thirty day objection limit in section 120 applies under either name, so if you are holding an older letter, or reading an older article, the wording moved and the three weeks and a bit did not.
That rename is worth one careful look at your own letters. The thirty day list is short and specific: return to work, re-employment, and those plans. Everything else in your claim carries six months. A letter that has been sitting on the counter for a month is a different problem depending on which of those two lists it belongs to.
Do I need a lawyer or a representative to file a WSIB claim?
There is free help in Ontario, and most people never hear about it. The Office of the Worker Adviser is an independent agency of the Ontario government giving free advice and representation to non-unionized injured workers and their survivors, at both WSIB and the tribunal. It can identify the right forms and advise on time limits. If you are unionized, your union is the equivalent.
Call before you sign, not after. Contact them before you sign the Appeal Readiness Form rather than after. That form is a declaration that your appeal is ready, and evidence you had all along but did not submit may not be accepted once it is in.
The same is true one step further along. Reconsideration turns on evidence that did not exist when the decision was made, not evidence you had and did not send. Whoever ends up representing you, the record they will work from is the one you kept while the clocks were running.
Last verified: August 2026
Checked against: sections 21, 22, 26 to 31, 58, 120 and 125 of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997 as reproduced in WSIB's Operational Policy Manual, WSIB Appeals Practices and Procedures as updated July 2026, Workers' Requirement to Claim and Consent, Third Party Rights of Action, and the Office of the Worker Adviser.
Section text on this page is taken from WSIB's reproduction of the Act in its own policy manual.
Deadlines change. If you find something on this page that is out of date, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it publicly.
Keeping the record these deadlines depend on
One clock runs from the accident, several run from letters arriving, one runs from a form you are asked to complete, and one of them treats saying nothing as a decision. That is a filing system, not a memory exercise.
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 Ontario 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.
EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT
The Ontario Workplace Injury Companion Guide
This page tells you the dates. The guide walks you through them, and gives you somewhere to write down what happened on each one.
- All ten clocks, with what starts each one
- The forms in the order you meet them, from the Form 6 to the Notice of Appeal
- What to write down the day each WSIB letter arrives
- The objection and appeal routes, from the front-line decision maker to WSIAT
$24.99 · instant download · yours to keep
See the Ontario Workplace Injury Companion GuideMost people take it with the National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide, which is the daily record the dates hang on.
Not ready for a guide? The checklist for the first week after a workplace injury is at hurtsquare.ca/7. It is free and asks nothing of you.
This page is general information for people in Ontario. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by province and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a representative, the WSIB or the Office of the Worker Adviser.