Absolutely nothing has changed at the WCB Alberta since Patrick Clayton took a gun into the Workers Compensation Board Edmonton and took a bunch of hostages, nothing, zip, nada.
It is just business as usual at WCB Alberta, screwing hard working Canadians out of any kind of medical treatment for their injuries. All the BS that has been pumped out by the Minister of Employment is really nothing more that a big giant heaping pile of Bullshit. He seems good at it.
Bullshitting I mean. As a labour minister he is good at ensuring that plane loads of temporary foreign workers will be doing most of the grunt work up at Ft. McStinky. Or Ft. McSpooge, or Ft. McCrack, whichever you prefer. As far as a labour minister who is good at putting forward progressive policies that will increase the safety of workers, he sucks. I mean he really does suck at his job. He is able to make empty promises, and deliver some convincing platitudes, full of empty BS and completely devoid of any kind of substance when it comes to worker safety or actually wanting to participate in any kind of meaningful change in Alberta. Change that will prepare the workers in this province for the challenges that are ahead in an ever increasingly competitive global work environment.
Monday, October 10, 2011
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Alberta's WCB has come to be a fraudulent corporation in as much as the Alberta PC's have become a criminal organization. It's a cozy little setup. The white-collar criminals known as the Alberta PC's legislate that workers must pay into the WCB. Then they put their pals like Rick Lelacheur in charge to hire (using workers' money) doctors and lawyers who are dedicated to deny injury claims. The PCs then claim that the WCB operates at arm's length to the government. Meaning; they will not interfere into WCB operations and take no responsibility for WCB operations.
ReplyDeleteClint Dunford was a good example of effective Bullshitting. While promising to clean up a 20 year backlog of injury claims at WCB, he was able to keep his high level government job as Human Resources minister, but did nothing. What Dunford did was contravene his oath to uphold his office, yet he has never been prosecuted. His crime and those of WCB are protected by another accomplice; Alberta's Justice minister.
Having seen many stories about WCB abuse of injured workers Patrick's actions although very disturbing are not all that surprising. When you do not have a voice you end up speaking for yourself. Perhaps if Mr. Clayton was aware of the following facts he would have had a better understanding into what he was up against when dealing with the insurance company for the employers of Alberta, the WCB. The SIU (Special Investigation Unit) for the WCB is mandated to sniff out fraud within the system, this includes workers, employers and yes even employees of the WCB itself. However I do not believe they look into the employees of the board all that often if ever.
ReplyDeleteThe Manager of the SIU, is a former LAPD police officer that came to be employed by the Alberta WCB in 1994. In the past couple of decades through various news stories it has come to the attention of all Albertans that there is apparently 30,000 contentious claims within the Alberta WCB. These consist of long term significant injury claims that the claimants have suffered. These are not made up of the 99% of no lost time claims that the board boasts of.
It is safe to assume that most all of the 30,000 claims received some form of SIU attention in their adjudication. One major news article by Richard A. Serrano, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, is a news story that most Albertans are probably not aware of:
http://articles.latimes.com/1992-10-04/news/mn-1020_1_problem-officer/2
The WCB SIU Manager is number 13 on the list of 44 out of approx.1800 officers that were investigated by Warren Christopher in the Christopher Commission Report (wiki) and as you read for yourself was one of only three officers that were Fired, him being fired for "Callous Disregard of Duties."
Based on the fact that this "problem officer" is the gentleman that heads up the Alberta WCB SIU department and who looks into workers malfeasance, I think without question that a full Public Inquiry is now in order to expose the truth about what permanently disabled injured workers face when trying to follow the process put in place that totally favors the WCB and has little or no regard for the significantly disabled injured workers and their families as Patrick Clayton's experience currently and clearly demonstrates.