Ontario increases cancer coverage for firefighters

Thespec.com
May 1, 2014
By Daniel Nolan

The Ontario government has agreed to provide firefighters coverage under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act for six additional cancers presumed to be work-related.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and Labour Minister Kevin Flynn made the announcement Wednesday at a Toronto fire station.

Coverage will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 1960 and apply to full-time, part-time and volunteer firefighters and fire investigators.

"Every day, Ontario firefighters risk their health and lives to protect us," Flynn said. "I think all Ontarians would agree that we also have a responsibility to protect them."

The move comes just before a possible provincial election and after the Ontario Professional Fire Fighters Association (OPFFA) started lobbying the Liberal government a few years back to have the six cancer types added to workplace legislation.

The province first passed legislation in 2007 that made it easier for firefighters to qualify for compensation for some job-related cancers and heart attacks. This private member's bill from Hamilton Centre MPP (and now Ontario NDP leader) Andrea Horwath was named after Hamilton firefighter Bob Shaw.

Shaw was one of 264 firefighters who tackled the three-day Plastimet blaze in the city's North End in July 1997. He was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in 2003, but his claim was denied by the Workplace Safety Insurance Board. Shaw died in 2004 at the age of 55.

The Bob Shaw Bill identified eight types of cancer where firefighters can access benefits under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act. They are brain, bladder, kidney, colorectal and esophageal cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, certain types of leukemia, esophageal cancer and ureter cancer.

The province said breast cancer, multiple myeloma and testicular cancer will be added immediately. Prostate cancer, lung cancer and skin cancer will be phased in by 2017.

The addition of the six cancers also came from a private member's bill. It was introduced by Vaughan Liberal MPP Steven Del Luca.

OPFFA president Mark McKinnon applauded the governments' move and said it will "allow firefighters and their families to focus on getting better instead of struggling to get WSIB benefits for an illness that could have been contracted years earlier."

There are about 450 fire departments in Ontario, made up of 11,000 full-time firefighters, 19,000 volunteer firefighters and 200 part-time firefighters.