Finding 01
01The evidence
The workplace, not the diagnosis,decides recovery.
Canada's disability system decides whether someone is fit to return through a medical lens: diagnosis, functional capacity, clinical checkboxes. It does not assess the workplace the person is returning to. That is the error.
Disability is biopsychosocial. The team, the supervisor, and the conditions of the job shape recovery at least as much as the diagnosis. When the receiving workplace is unsafe, a return does not heal. It harms.
02The convergence
Three independent bodies of evidence say the same thing. They were produced by different people, for different reasons, using different methods, and they converge. That convergence is the argument.
Different people. Different reasons. Different methods. One finding.
Convergence is the argument, not volume. Nothing below is here to pad the case.
03Peer-reviewed research
What the research finds.
Everything on this page is primary-source checked. Anything awaiting verification would carry the mark shown below.
Author, year, journal and DOI on every claim
How the employer handled the claim predicts return to work better than the worker's satisfaction with their own healthcare.
Finding 02
This one finding is the thesis in miniature.
Butler, Johnson and Côté (2007), Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. doi:10.1097/jom.0b013e318032211d (opens in a new tab)Peer-reviewed research, continued
Finding 03
The claims process itself harms claimants: a “toxic dose” of system problems, and measurable damage to mental health from the process.
Finding 04~10%
Psychological safety is measurable, not a mood.
A one-unit gain in a workplace's psychosocial safety climate was associated with roughly a 10% drop in sickness absence over a year.
SourceLoh, Dollard and Friebel (2024), The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 35(3), 635 to 648.
04The public court record
What the courts have already decided.
Canadian courts repeatedly find insurers and employers liable when claims and returns are handled this way, and the awards are rising.
Neutral citations, openable on CanLII
Ruling 01$1.5M
In punitive damages, the largest such award in Canadian history, for denying a stroke survivor's long-term disability claim by relying on the evidence that supported denial and ignoring the medical evidence that did not.
Ruling 02$500K
In punitive damages where insurers concealed an approved claim and used a claimant's financial desperation to coerce a settlement.
Ruling 03$1M
In punitive damages, restored by the Supreme Court, for an insurer's high-handed bad-faith claims handling.
Ruling 04
Employers held liable for treating a return to work as a chance to exit a disabled worker, or for judging fitness by assumption instead of assessment.
This is the public court record, not an attack list. Company names appear here only because they are part of a citation a reader can open.
05Lived experience, in aggregate
What claimants say, everywhere, in the same words.
Across public forums and lived-experience research, claimants describe the same pattern. Four themes recur:
Theme 01The process becomes a second injury.
Theme 02The case manager works for the insurer, not for them.
Theme 03They are returned too early into an unsafe workplace, and relapse.
Theme 04The employer disappears behind a third party, absent from the very workplace that decides whether they recover.We speak in themes, never in named, quoted, or profiled individuals. Lived experience is held in aggregate. That is a commitment, not a formality, and it is why you will not find a personal story here.
06How we verify
You should be able to check us.
Every figure on this page names its source in the place the figure appears, not in a footnote you have to hunt for. Research claims carry author, year, journal and DOI. Court awards carry a neutral citation you can open on CanLII.
Every work behind every figure on this page is gathered in one place: the full source list.
We say what we left out.Figures that circulate in this field but are not in our verified files do not appear here, even when they would help our case. One example: a widely quoted evidence-to-practice gap figure is not in our files, so it is not on this page.
We mark what is not yet primary-source checked.Anything awaiting verification is labelled, rather than quietly published and quietly corrected.Awaiting verification
We do not claim our own tools are validated.The Alliance is developing research instruments. None is validated yet, and we will not say otherwise until one is.
07What we stand for
Not blame. A standard.
01Assess the workplace and its psychological safety before a return-to-work decision, not after one fails.
02Handle claims on the evidence, never adversarially.
03Support the supervisor and the team, the real predictors of recovery.
Not every insurer is moving the wrong way. Some have already shifted toward this model, and they are who we build with.
If reading this brought something up, you do not have to sit with it alone.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911. To talk to someone now, call or text 9-8-8, Canada’s Suicide Crisis Helpline, any time, in English or French.
Provincial and territorial crisis lines, including Indigenous-specific lines, are on our crisis page.