This is not legal advice! What you are getting here is just general legal information. It is not a substitute for advice from an actual lawyer about your specific situation. If you need legal advice, we urge you to find a lawyer who can help you.
WorkSafe NB is a provincial Crown corporation that gives benefits and supports to people who’ve been injured at work. These can include replacement of lost wages, health care (including rehabilitation, counselling, and medications), and, in extreme situations, retraining.
Facts about WorkSafeNB
- WorkSafeNB functions like an insurance provider. Employers pay premiums to WorkSafe for the people who work for them. Those people are entitled to benefits if they suffer a workplace injury.
- Because most employers legally have to belong to WorkSafe, 90% of New Brunswick workers are covered.
- In 2023 roughly 5,200 claims were adjudicated by WorkSafeNB; 98% were accepted.
- However, most claims are for physical injuries. The kind of mental stress injuries that are covered are “traumatic psychological injuries”—something a first responder might experience, for example.
- In 2023, about 225 TPI claims were accepted.
- Almost 90% of TPI claims are made by public-sector workers.
- Sources: WorkSafeNB Annual Report 2023, Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada, Tableau Public
If you’ve been harmed by sexual harassment at work, you might think WorkSafeNB will help you.
- Maybe after you were harassed, you took time off work and so lost income.
- Maybe the harassment damaged your mental health, and you ended up needing to spend money on medication for anxiety or depression.
- Maybe the harassment had such an effect on you that you had to leave an industry and ended up needing to retrain for a new type of work in a different field.
Those are the kinds of expenses—replacement of lost wages, medication costs, retraining costs—that WorkSafeNB often covers.
However, historically, WorkSafe has mostly handled claims related to physical injuries suffered by workers in male-dominated fields like construction, manufacturing, and uniform occupations like policing and firefighting. If you slip at work and break your ankle, or are struck by a falling object, or are injured in a fire or explosion: that is the kind of situation WorkSafe was designed for and has a lot of experience handling.
But if the injury is to your mental health, WorkSafe only offers benefits and supports when you have suffered “traumatic mental stress,” which is very narrowly defined. Realistically, it’s extremely unlikely that if you apply for mental stress benefits, you’ll be successful. WorkSafe states that “workplace bullying/harassment/verbal abuse would not be considered traumatic unless it involved threat of death, serious injury or sexual violence.”
Your options could include making a complaint to the Human Rights Commission or taking legal action.
