The B.C. Provincial Government implemented changes to the Workers Compensation Act (“WCA”) effective April 6, 2020. These revisions to the WCA were made pursuant to the Statute Revision Act, and are intended to modernize the language used in the WCA to make it more coherent and easier to read and understand; to rearrange the Parts of the WCA and to renumber its Sections so as to be easier to find applicable provisions; and to correct grammatical and typographical errors.
These revisions to the WCA are not intended to result in any substantive changes to the existing workers’ compensation, occupational health and safety, and employer classification/assessment provisions which were in effect prior to April 6, 2020. However, as a result of these revisions, there are now 8 separate Parts to the WCA (where there had previously been 4), and all of the previous Sections of the WCA have been rearranged and renumbered within the revised WCA. There have also been some language changes with the intent to make the applicable provisions more understandable. For example, the use of the term “Discriminatory Action” in the OH&S Part of the WCA has been revised to read “Prohibited Action”.
WorkSafeBC has updated their Policy Manuals and other key materials (such as Practice Directives) to be in accordance with the revisions made to the WCA. WorkSafeBC has also provided a “Table of Concordance” between the provisions in the previous and revised WCA, which can be found here.
For more information on this article, please contact Andrew Wood or Brad Cocke.
