Steve Payne March 5, 2013

Bill 119 will help WSIB boss towards $400,000 bonus

Canadian Contractor

While contractors struggle to find a way to make their mandatory WSIB payments, I. David Marshall, the WSIB's president and CEO, hopes to get his hands on a $400,000 bonus for, in part, collecting more WSIB fees

Ontario’s Bill 119, which reaches deep into the pockets of contractors who must now pay mandatory WSIB, will almost certainly line the pockets of the WSIB’s bureaucrat-in-chief, I. David Marshall, president and CEO of the heavily-criticized organization. He’s expecting that the controversial legislation will help him to make an almost half-million-dollar bonus.

Marshall was already collecting $400,000 a year, not including benefits, on a five year contract, before the bill came into effect in January.

Now, as detailed on the WSIB’s own website (click here), Marshall stands to collect a bonus of $400,000 (20% per year of his term) at the end of his five-year contract in December of next year. The bonus will be paid, the WSIB says, if Marshall has successfully implemented a plan to “reduce, and ultimately retire the WSIB’s unfunded liability, as well as improvements in administrative efficiency and service delivery.”

If he gets that bonus, Marshall will have made $2.4-million for five years of work. The “unfunded liability” for which contractors are being asked to pick up the slack? $14.2-billion, and possibly much higher.

Marshall’s bonus is not exactly breaking news. It was made public a year ago by a group called the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups, who wrote an open letter to then-Premier Dalton McGuinty. They were protesting the Marshall administration’s cuts to WSIB benefits to their members.

They quoted from Marshall, addressing the Standing Committee of Public Accounts, a year earlier, on Feb. 24, 2010. (Hansard, page 490):

Mr. David Marshall: “My commitment is to develop a plan … that brings us to a fully funded position within a reasonable amount of time … That plan will have measurable benchmarks. It will say that we have to hit this rate of return, that we have to reduce duration by this amount by this date … However, it’s going to have some tough, tough proposals in it. I mean, you can’t recover this amount of money without some sort of pain some-where in the system … We are taking it very seriously. It’s in my letter. I don’t get any bonus unless I can meet this target. It’s a very clear target, and we’re going to get there. I’m confident that we will…”

The mandatory WSIB legislation, Bill 119, will help Marshall to move that much closer to an almost half-a-million dollar handout, paid for by contractors.

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