Recovering After a Workplace Injury in Ontario: A Complete Guide

What should I do first after a workplace injury in Ontario?

Tell your employer, then see a doctor and say the injury happened at work. Those two sentences do more for your claim than anything else you will do in the first week. Your employer must report your injury to the WSIB within three days of learning about it, and your doctor's report is what connects your condition to your job.

Ask for a copy of your employer's Form 7. You are entitled to it, and it tells you what version of events the WSIB received.

How long do I have to file a WSIB claim?

Six months from the date of your injury. For an occupational disease the clock runs from the date you learned the illness was work-related. If a family member died from a work-related cause, a survivor's claim must be filed within six months of the death.

Late claims are sometimes accepted where there is a good reason for the delay, so write down why the delay happened while you still remember it clearly.

How long do I have to appeal a WSIB decision?

This is where most people lose ground, because there are two different clocks and the shorter one covers the decisions that matter most day to day.

You object using an Intent to Object form. If two decisions arrive with different limits, the WSIB applies the six month limit to both. Missing a limit is not always fatal, though you must ask for an extension in writing and explain the delay.

Full dates and forms are on our Ontario WSIB claim deadlines page.

Does my employer have to give me my job back?

In many cases yes, and this is the clock nobody mentions. If your employer regularly employs twenty or more workers and you had worked there continuously for at least one year before your injury, they carry a re-employment obligation.

Separately from the WSIB, the Ontario Human Rights Code treats a workplace injury as a disability, so your employer has a duty to accommodate you regardless of company size or how long you worked there. That has its own time limits and does not wait for the WSIB.

What should I be writing down?

Three things, from day one.

• What your restrictions say, in the words your provider used. Every return to work dispute is decided by comparing what you were offered against what your provider said you could do.
• Every conversation about coming back. Date, who, what was said, who else was there. A supervisor pressing you to return early carries real weight in a file and leaves no trace unless you make one.
• What the return actually cost you. Hours worked is only half the record. If four hours on the floor cost you two days afterwards, the four hours on their own tell the wrong story.

Our free Resource Hub has a fillable return to work tracker built around exactly that comparison.

Who can help me for free?

If you are not in a union, the Office of the Worker Adviser gives free advice and representation to Ontario workers on WSIB matters. Community legal clinics also take workers' compensation cases. Both are free, and neither is well enough known.

The WSIB publishes its own appeals guidance, and your decision letter names your decision maker, who can walk you through an objection.

The Ontario Companion Guide

Our Ontario Workplace Injury Companion Guide carries the deadlines, forms, board names and appeal routes for this province, with fillable space for the record you build alongside them. Pair it with The Way Back National Recovery Guide.