Saskatchewan SGI Injury Claim Deadlines

The dates that govern an SGI injury claim in Saskatchewan. Free. No email required. For drivers, passengers, cyclists and people on foot.

Saskatchewan is the only province that lets you choose your own injury system. SGI says so itself: no other Canadian province offers residents a choice in auto injury coverage. That choice decides everything else on this page.

None of these count from the collision. They count from a letter, from a mediator's closing statement, from the day you filed or from the day a decision was given. That is why two people hurt in the same crash can be at completely different points on this line. Everything below explains each clock, which document starts it, and what to write down the day that document arrives.

Are you on No Fault or Tort coverage in Saskatchewan?

No Fault, unless you filed a declaration to change it. Every Saskatchewan resident is automatically covered by No Fault injury coverage unless they chose Tort coverage and filed a declaration form with SGI. If you have never filed one, you are on No Fault.

This is the first thing to establish, because the two systems behave completely differently. Under No Fault your benefits come from SGI whoever caused the collision, and SGI's decisions are challenged through mediation or the Appeal Commission. Under Tort your right to sue survives, though it is affected by whether you were responsible for the collision.

That is why advice written for anywhere else in Canada tends not to fit here, and why two Saskatchewan drivers can be in the same collision and be in two different systems. The choice was made in advance, on paper, and most people who made it made it years ago.

How long do you have to appeal an SGI injury decision?

Ninety days from the date of the written decision. Section 191 of The Automobile Accident Insurance Act gives you 90 days after the date of SGI's written decision to appeal to either the Court of King's Bench or the Automobile Injury Appeal Commission.

Where the appeal date in the decision letter falls on a weekend or a statutory holiday, the period runs to the next business day.

Every decision letter is a clock starting. SGI must issue a written decision whenever it pays a benefit for the first time, calculates an amount, declines a benefit or treatment, increases or decreases a benefit, changes an earlier decision, suspends a benefit or ends one. Each of those carries its own window.

So this is not one deadline that you either meet or miss at the start. It is a deadline that reopens every time SGI writes to you, and a letter that looks like an update is often a decision with 90 days attached to it. Log the date each letter arrives and what it decided.

Why does my SGI decision letter say 101 days?

Because 101 is SGI's policy and 90 is the Act. That number is real, and it is not a mistake on the letter. SGI builds it from the 90 days in section 191, the 10 days that regular mail is deemed to take under regulation 103, and one further day for the letter to reach Canada Post.

The Appeal Commission is the body that date stamps your application and decides whether it arrived in time. It publishes 90 days, and states that it cannot extend the appeal period under any circumstances.

Work to 90 days from the date printed on the letter. Counting to 90 costs you nothing and cannot go wrong. Counting to 101 can only ever be tested by being late, and the body that would test it has already said it cannot extend.

When is the SGI appeal window 180 days instead of 90?

In one narrow set of circumstances. The Appeal Commission publishes 180 days where, at the time of the accident, you were found to be at fault and you were a non-resident of Saskatchewan, were impaired, or were intentionally using a motor vehicle to cause injury. Every other circumstance is 90 days.

The 180 days is also counted differently. It runs from the date you receive SGI's written decision, where the ordinary 90 days runs from the date of the decision itself. If you think you are in the longer window, record the date the letter reached you as well as the date printed on it.

If you are not certain whether this applies to you, work to 90 days. It is the shorter of the two and it is the one that applies to almost everybody.

What happens if you ask for mediation first?

Mediation is optional and it does not cost you the appeal. You provide SGI with written notice setting out the matters you want mediated, together with a fee of $54. The parties are to agree on a mediator within 30 days after SGI receives the request, and if they cannot, either side can ask the manager of mediation services to appoint one.

A mediator cannot make a binding decision. If nothing changes, the mediator closes the mediation by letter, and a fresh 90 days to appeal runs from the date of that completion statement.

Keep the letter. The Appeal Commission asks for either SGI's decision letter or the mediation completion statement with your application, so the completion statement is both your proof and your new start date.

What was said in the mediation is not admissible in the appeal without the written consent of the mediator and all parties. You can speak freely there without weakening what comes after.

Can you appeal to both the Appeal Commission and the court?

No, and this is the trap. Section 191 provides that if you appeal to the Court of King's Bench, no proceeding respecting the matter may be taken before the Appeal Commission, and if you appeal to the Appeal Commission, no action or proceeding may be taken before the Court of King's Bench. Picking one closes the other.

From either route a further appeal lies to the Court of Appeal on a question of law only, and it must be made within 30 days of the decision, or within any further time a judge of the Court of Appeal allows. A question of law is a narrow thing. It is not a second chance to argue the facts.

That is a decision worth taking advice on rather than making alone under time pressure. It is also the one thing on this page that cannot be undone by writing another letter.

What does an appeal to the Appeal Commission cost?

Seventy five dollars to apply, and less than that if paying it would cause you substantial hardship. You can apply for a fee waiver and the Commission may waive it. If you win, the Commission refunds the fee.

What	Amount	Worth knowing
Mediation request	$54	Optional. Paid with your written notice to SGI.
Appeal application	$75	Waivable for substantial hardship. Refunded if you win.
Leave to vary a decision later	$75	Where you show a prima facie material change in your circumstances.
Reimbursed if you win	up to $3,316	Reasonable expenses from the date you file to the date of the decision.

The reimbursement is a rule, not a favour. The regulations require SGI to reimburse a successful customer up to $3,316 for reasonable expenses incurred from the date the appeal is filed to the date of the decision. Meals, lodging, travel and expert reports count. Keep every receipt from the day you file.

Can an appeal you have already filed be lost?

Yes, and this one runs quietly. If an appeal before the Appeal Commission is not set down for hearing within six months after the application was filed, the Commission may dismiss it as abandoned.

Before that happens the Commission must notify you in writing, and you then have 15 days from service of that notice to show cause why the appeal should not be dismissed. Fifteen days is short. Open everything the Commission sends you on the day it arrives.

Submit your evidence as soon as you can after filing. You are also asked for a list of your documents, a list of any witnesses and the relief you are seeking. The Commission gives at least 30 days written notice of the hearing date, time and place.

Can you add new information after SGI has decided?

Yes, and this is the part worth using. SGI receives and reviews new information at any time during the appeal or mediation process, and every decision letter invites you to send anything further that is relevant.

SGI can also reconsider a decision on its own authority or at your request, where there are new facts, where your circumstances have changed or where an error was made. If it does, it must issue a new decision letter. A new letter is a new clock.

If your symptoms changed, if a specialist saw something the first report missed, or if you can now show what you cannot do that you used to do, that is new information and it belongs on the file.

There is also a route after the decision. A decision of the Appeal Commission or the Court of King's Bench can be varied at any time where you establish a prima facie case that there has been a material change in your circumstances. You apply for leave first. The fee is $75 again.

You are assigned a Personal Injury Representative at SGI, who continues to handle your claim while the appeal runs. Write down their name, their direct line and the date of every conversation you have with them.

What happens if you missed the SGI appeal deadline?

It depends which deadline, and Saskatchewan is more mixed than it first looks. The 90 days is the hard edge. The Appeal Commission states that it cannot extend the appeal period under any circumstances, and it is the body that date stamps your application.

Check which document you were counting from. If you asked for mediation and it closed without changing anything, your 90 days runs from the date of the mediator's completion statement, not from SGI's original letter. If a later letter changed, reduced, suspended or ended a benefit, that letter carries its own 90 days. People who think they are out of time are often counting from the first letter they ever received.

SGI can reconsider. It can revisit a decision on its own authority or at your request, where there are new facts, where your circumstances have changed or where an error was made, and if it does it must issue a new decision letter. A new letter is a new clock. That is not an extension, and nobody can promise you one, but it is a door that is not locked.

The 30 days onward to the Court of Appeal can be extended. It must be made within 30 days of the decision, or within any further time a judge of the Court of Appeal allows.

And a decision already made can be varied. A decision of the Appeal Commission or the Court of King's Bench can be varied at any time where you establish a prima facie case that there has been a material change in your circumstances. You apply for leave first and the fee is $75.

I was hurt in a vehicle while working. Does WCB apply too?

Then a second system applies at the same time, and it runs on completely different rules. WCB Saskatchewan sets no deadline at all to appeal a decision, and a hard six month deadline to make the claim in the first place. Our Saskatchewan WCB page sets it out.

Read that in the opposite order to this page. Here the danger is the appeal deadline and the claim is the easy part. There the appeal has no deadline at all and the six months to make the claim is the thing that catches people.

Do I need a lawyer to appeal an SGI decision?

Not to start one. Mediation is a written notice to SGI setting out the matters you want mediated, with a fee of $54. An appeal to the Appeal Commission is an application, a list of your documents, a list of any witnesses and the relief you are seeking. Those are things you can write down.

Money is not meant to be the obstacle either. The $75 application fee can be waived where paying it would cause substantial hardship, it is refunded if you win, and a successful customer is reimbursed up to $3,316 for reasonable expenses, expert reports included.

There is one decision the page will not tell you to make alone. Choosing between the Court of King's Bench and the Appeal Commission is worth taking advice on rather than making under time pressure, because filing at one closes the other and nothing you write afterwards reopens it.

One thing to be clear about: the Personal Injury Representative assigned to you works at SGI and continues to handle your claim while the appeal runs. Write down their name, their direct line and the date of every conversation. What no representative can do afterwards is reconstruct the record you did not keep.

Keeping the record these deadlines depend on

Saskatchewan runs on decision letters and one irreversible choice. Both depend entirely on you knowing what arrived, when it arrived and what it said.

The date printed on each decision letter, and the date it reached you. Which of SGI's decisions it was. The date of the mediator's completion statement, if there was a mediation. The day you filed. Your Personal Injury Representative's name and direct line. Every receipt from the day you filed onwards.

Recovery First. Pressure Last.

The scene checklist for the first three days is at hurtsquare.ca/72. It is free and asks nothing of you.

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This page is general information for people in Saskatchewan. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by province and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a lawyer, SGI or the Automobile Injury Appeal Commission.