Outgoing WSIB chair talks Ontario OHS changes

In March, Steve Mahoney announced he would not be seeking another term as chair of Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) when his term was finished in May. The former Ontario MPP and federal cabinet minister talked to us about his six years at the helm of the board and what his plans are after he steps down as leader.

CSR: What was it like to lead the WSIB during such a period of transition?

Mahoney: Well it was actually quite exciting when we focused on prevention. We had our ad campaign that really got a tremendous amount of attention. We launched the road to zero campaign and the outreach with stakeholders was frankly a major part of my job.

Now that prevention has gone up to the Ministry of Labour my job has changed, so that’s one of reasons why I’m leaving office. But going out across the province and meeting with stakeholders and injured workers and labour leaders and municipalities, etcetera, was really very rewarding and gave us an opportunity to put in place a number of really major systemic changes to the WSIB that I think will serve it well going forward.

CSR: Was the job daunting when you started?

Mahoney: Oh yeah, well I was in elected office for what, 26 years and I served at every level, municipal, provincial, I was a federal cabinet minister. This is the most political job I’ve ever had in my life. The different views, everybody’s got a solution to the problem but the reality is that there’s no easy answers — whatever particular problem is — whether it’s the unfunded liability or better treatment of injured workers or the indexation of their benefits or lower premiums. It’s push and pull all the time so it started out to be a part-time job and it’s been anything but. It’s really required an awful lot of energy, but it became a passion to me, it became more of a cause than a job and I still feel that way about it.

CSR: Why are you moving on?

Mahoney: Really because the job has changed. With promotion, the government made the decision and it’s certainly their decision to make, (they moved) prevention into the Ministry of Labour and appointed George Gritziotis, I have a lot of time for George, I think he’s a high quality guy, they made him chief prevention officer.

Then they ended up closing down our prevention department, the chief of prevention... was given a package and he left and there’s about 200 employees who have been moved around. So it’s a major shift. And we’re now a compensation board more than we are a prevention board. Our mandate has changed. So I just saw the role for me, I’m not guy who likes to shuffle papers and sit behind a desk all day and that’s the role the chair’s office has come down to. Without dealing with the health and safety associations and the different organizations, whether it’s in construction or small business or manufacturing or whatever, it’s a different role. And I don’t leave with any bitterness, it’s a different role and frankly if this was the job six years ago I probably wouldn’t have agreed to take it in the first place.

So recognizing that there is a team in place that’s going to deal with prevention — that’s the most important thing. And I’m not turning my back on those issues I’ve been talking to some folks and I may yet surface in another role that deals with preventing injuries and that type of thing.

CSR: I was going to ask you about your future plans, anything else you can say?

Mahoney: There’s nothing concrete but we’re having discussions. I’ll just give it some time and go watch my grandkids play hockey and enjoy a bit of a breather.

CSR: With the WSIB becoming more of a compensation board than a prevention board, what do you think of that change and all the changes that have happened?

Mahoney: Well it’s too early to really decide on the effectiveness. We know the reasons are sound. The Tony Dean report went out to all the stakeholders. The majority of the stakeholders that presented to Tony Dean following the collapse of scaffolding and the fatalities that occurred Christmas eve a couple years ago... (were) of the opinion was that prevention should be taken away from the WSIB and that we should focus on our core business, which the stakeholders felt was insurance.

And so the government really was in the position that it had no choice in my view but to accept Tony Dean’s recommendations because that was solidly backed up and supported by stakeholders. April 1 is that official turnover date and that’s just happening next week so George has time to implement his vision of prevention and I’m sure he will be very dedicated and I’ve offered to help in any way I can. If he wants to talk to me, get my advice, whatever else, I’m absolutely supportive of him and his efforts.

Time will tell, there have been, in years gone by in the past, there have been shifts. This kind of thing used to be in an agency when I was a member of the Ontario legislature, it was a separate agency, then it was moved into the WSIB when Mike Harris got elected as premier. A lot of change has been made and now we’ve had to clean up a lot of those problems. So know it’s been moved again and probably in 10 years time it will be moved again. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

CSR: What’s been your biggest challenge at the helm?

Mahoney: Probably creating a system where we could effectively listen to stakeholders and make them feel their voice was being heard. I think that when I did a year long consultation and wrote a report, if there was one thing I heard out of all of those meetings and tours around the province, it was that the WSIB doesn’t listen. What we used to do was come into a meeting — and I was as guilty of this as anybody — we thought we were consulting but in fact what we were doing was trying to sell our point of view. We changed the system and I established chair’s advisory committees, three in business and one for the labour movement of injured workers.

We did something quite unique. We had, when the groups agreed to appoint people to sit on these chair’s advisory committees, they were all required to sign confidentiality letters… and I signed it as well, so what we would discuss in the room stayed in the room. Because one of the big problems we had is that if we wanted to put an idea on the table, and somebody didn’t like it, they’d go running up the street to the minister or the premier’s office or their MPP and all of a sudden we’ve got political flack coming at us.

But we wanted to open up our budget, our thinking, our strategic plan, we wanted to share information with stakeholders and get their input in it so we could develop these things together.

These chair’s advisory committees have been in place for almost two years now, and I’ve heard from the stakeholders it’s totally changed their attitude with regard to how they consult. I know the president, David Marshall, wants to continue with them, and I hope that the new chair, whoever that may be, will take up that method of consultation.

CSR: What milestones are you most proud of reaching?

Mahoney: Certainly that would be one because I think its created a new way of dealing with our stakeholders and people tell me they can’t remember a time when the chair of the organization had such a positive relationship with, for example, the head of the Ontario Federation of Labour and at the same time with the head of the construction association and the manufacturing association.

I’m hearing this back in reports from people, there’s a couple of article’s I’ve read and letters that I’ve read, that they really appreciate my efforts to communicate in a more open and transparent way. I mean we now put everything on our website, we put our annual report up there, we put any kind of report that requires consultation, we’ll put it up, and ask people to comment back. So we really modernized the place.

I think another major milestone... is the improvement in our technical abilities from an electronic perspective. When I arrived six years ago the first thing I did was have a tour — what they call “a day in the life of a claim” — and I walked into this room at 200 Front St., that was the fax room, and there had to be a million pieces of paper flying all over the place all coming in by fax.

Well now you can file, you can register electronically, you can pay your premiums electronically, you can get a clearance certificate electronically and we’re very close to the point where you’ll be able to get it on your hand-held electronic device… it will make the system a lot less cumbersome.

CSR: Is there anything that hasn’t been done that you had hoped to finish prior to your tenure?

Mahoney: I was kind of hoping to see the Harry Arthurs report through. But that would have taken another couple of years. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the board and the new chair and the president and the executive team deal with the recommendations.

We’re going to officially see them on Friday (March 30) and I’ve seen them already, but there’s some pretty major changes in the establishment of a funding formula going forward and hopefully will bring some level of confidence to the auditor general and to the minister of finance that, financially, the board has things under control, because I mean I think we do. Compensation boards were set up with an ability to carry an unfunded liability unlike any other insurance system in the country where they must balance their liabilities and their assets.

Comp boards were given the ability to carry an unfunded so that the employer of the day didn’t have to pay the burden of 100 per cent of costs — you could push it off into the future. And to a certain degree that’s fine, but it’s gotten to the point where we’re pushing too much of it off. So there has to be a new discipline, just like there is with everything. I mean you see it in Minister Duncan’s budget; you’re going to see it in Minister Flaherty’s budget out of Ottawa. We’re no different. We’re not an island here and we’ve got to have fiscal discipline to make sure we sustain the viability of the WSIB and primarily because we need it to be there for the future of workers who get injured on the job.

CSR: WSIB’s been in the news a lot while you’ve been chair. What’s that been like?

Mahoney: Well I’d rather not be in the news. I spent 26 years in elected office trying to get in the news and not succeeding very often and then spent the last six years trying to stay out of the news and I didn’t succeed in that either.

It’s part of the coverage... when something happens and somebody stands up in the legislature and says “isn’t it awful.” It’s not that they’re after me, they’re actually just trying to embarrass the government, they’re trying to see if there’s some kind of a scandal there. The reality is the WSIB is an agency that has not had any kind of scandal involved in the six years that I’ve been there. There will always be certain people in the legislature or in the stakeholder community who think we have to pay higher benefits, there will be people who think we have to charge lower premiums.

They use it as a political football, I did it myself when I was an MPP. It’s kind of the nature of the beast and you’ve got to have a thick skin. So as far as I’m concerned, I think I’m leaving this place in better shape than it was when I got there and I’m pleased about that. Much of that is due to the dedication and the hard work of the staff, an incredibly talented and dedicated group of men and women at the WSIB, right across the province who are really, really dedicated to their jobs. It’s more of a calling for a lot of folks than it is a job. I think once we get this unfunded liability on a downward track, I think there’s good things coming in the future.

CSR: With recent news of layoffs, what’s that been like for the culture at the WSIB?

Mahoney: Well, people come up to me in the elevators and the hallways and say “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving but I’m following you out the door.”

The reality is the organization has swollen to about 4,600 or 4,700 people. With new technology and the ability to do things quicker and more efficiently, I think it’s a matter of facing reality. What I don’t like — and this is more of a societal thing than it is a WSIB thing — I don’t like this sort of drive to the bottom.

We’re going to wind up without anybody having a job and we can’t be run by robots. We’ve got to have the human element and it’s particularly important with an organization like the WSIB.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t have efficiencies, you can’t do more with less. You’ve got better technologies, better ways of communicating. Simple little ways, like direct deposit of the benefit cheques into bank accounts, saves a lot of time and energy in writing cheques and all that kind of stuff.

The electronic improvements save an awful lot of time and unnecessary duplication of efforts. There’s going to be more layoffs I’m absolutely sure, but it’s got to be done with a view to providing good service and good benefits to injured workers.

CSR: What qualities or goals should the next board chair have?

Mahoney: (Laughs) I suspect they’re going to be looking for someone that’s more of an insurance-type executive. That is perhaps less small “p” politically engaged because the prevention is taking on a new role.

But in spite of the insurance capacity being important, you’ll never get away from the fact that there are stakeholders who have their own strong interests and their own concerns. So he or she has got to be prepared to listen to these people. I do hope that they’ll keep the advisory committees going; I think they’ll find they’re very valuable tools.

And probably a lot of patience. That’s probably something that I was short of and could have perhaps had more of — recognize that this is a 100 year old system and the problems didn’t arise overnight. But the fact of the matter is the vast majority of workers that get injured are taken care of very, very quickly and something like 15 per cent of our claims or even less than that, drive over 90 per cent of our budget. So the vast majority of workers in Ontario are very well served by the system.

I think the new chair is going to have to be patient, to recognize that there’s a plan is in place, a strategic plan. Take the time to work with the staff to understand it, to work with the stakeholders, to be open and transparent and be honest with the stakeholders because there’s going to have to be premium increases going forward and there’s a real need to improve the efficiency.

A lot of that is already underway under David Marshall’s leadership and so he or she will need to support David in that regard.

CSR: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you think safety professionals should know or be thinking about?

Mahoney: I think the most important thing, for me anyway; in watching how things unfold over the next while is, while I certainly really agree the unfunded liability needs to be dealt with, I don’t think we should let the tail wag the dog. We have to remember what the original principles of Justice Meredith were when he founded this whole organization 100 years ago: Employers are protected from lawsuits from their employees and employees are supposed to be provided with income replacement and health care and benefits and rehabilitation and retraining and all of that. If there’s one thing I would like to see, and I don’t know that it’s ever possible, but it would be to take the politics out of the WSIB and truly allow it to be run as an independent organization.