The following op-ed, by ICBA VP-Advocacy & Communications Jordan Bateman, was first published by Business in Vancouver on March 9, 2026.
One of the most persistent myths in B.C. business circles is that WorkSafeBC is sitting on a massive surplus – a piggybank that should be cracked open and handed back to employers. Manitoba did it, Ontario did it, New Brunswick and PEI did it. So why not British Columbia?
Because the surplus is gone.
It didn’t disappear overnight. It was frittered away, year by year, policy by policy, under an NDP government that treated the workers’ compensation fund less like an insurance reserve and more like a slush fund for political priorities. And now, B.C.’s small business owners are staring down the consequences.
The numbers are stark. According to WorkSafeBC’s own financial statements, in 2019 the system was funded at 153% – a full 23 points above the 130% floor set by policy (and insurance best practices). That cushion, billions built up over decades, was a rainy day fund. It was never meant to finance an ever-expanding bureaucratic empire.
By 2024, the funded ratio had dropped to 141%, with each percentage point representing roughly $135 million. That slide alone erased about $1.5 billion in breathing room.
But here’s the real kicker. Over the same six years, WorkSafeBC’s investment portfolio returned a net $6.8 billion more than what actuaries said was needed to keep the system stable. Windfall returns that artificially inflate the perception of a healthy system. Instead, WorkSafeBC burned through all of it – and then some. Combined with the funded ratio drawdown, that’s roughly $8 billion more than planned since 2019. About $1.5 billion a year in unanticipated spending.
All this while B.C. employers continue to improve their safety records. In any normal insurance model, a 12% decline in claims should translate to lower premiums. Instead, WorkSafeBC reports $3 billion in surplus drawdowns between 2019 and 2026 – which sounds generous until you realize the rate never actually dropped. The surplus subsidized a frozen rate, not a real reduction.
To put that in perspective: WorkSafeBC collected $2.4 billion in premium income in 2024. If premiums alone had to cover that overspend, employer rates would need to jump by 60%. For the small contractor bidding a school renovation or the family-run landscaping company trying to make payroll, a hike like that isn’t an inconvenience – it’s an extinction event. So what happens when the investment market inevitable slows?
Look at how B.C. stacks up nationally. In 2019, WorkSafeBC’s rate of $1.55 per $100 of assessable payroll was among the lowest in Canada – only three provinces were cheaper. By 2024, that same $1.55 is higher than every province except two. Ontario dropped from $1.65 to $1.30. New Brunswick slashed from $1.65 to $1.18, but B.C. stood still while the rest of Canada improved.
Why? Because those provinces focused on cost containment and returned surpluses to employers. B.C. did the opposite. The NDP expanded WorkSafeBC’s mandate into areas that have nothing to do with core workplace safety: washrooms on construction sites, for instance, was a political promise imposed on WorkSafe by the NDP government. Why is an insurance company counting bathrooms?
The NDP have also pushed toward broader definitions of psychological injury – a category that other jurisdictions have found to be a fiscal time bomb.
California learned this the hard way in the 1980s and ’90s, when expanding psychological claims led to a 1,300% spike in costs before reforms finally reined things in. Australia’s state of Victoria tried broadening its thresholds in 2021 and had to roll most of it back by 2024 as costs spiraled. These aren’t obscure cautionary tales. They’re warnings.
None of this means injured workers shouldn’t get help. They absolutely should. But a system that spends itself into insolvency doesn’t protect anyone. It collapses – and when it does, workers and small employers suffer most.
WorkSafeBC premiums are not tax revenue. They’re paid 100% by employers – workers aren’t charged premiums, unlike with the federal EI program – to insure their employees. Every dollar wasted on mission creep is a dollar taken from the job creators and entrepreneurs who build this province.
The construction industry has driven its injury rate down 54% since 1992 and its assessment costs down 89%. That didn’t happen because of more regulation. It happened because employers invested in safety and worked with their teams to make workplaces safer. They earned that surplus. And now it’s gone, thanks to NDP mismanagement.
WorkSafeBC is careening toward crisis, and appointing a long-time big labour boss and ally of the NDP as Board chair does nothing but further entrench NDP ideology. Like almost everything the David Eby Government has touched, WorkSafe’s fiscal record is alarming. The cushion is thinner, the spending is higher, and the political appetite for expansion shows no sign of slowing. We’re one bad investment cycle away from massive premium hikes and another blow to businesses struggling with historic cost pressures at every turn.
It’s time for B.C.’s business community to stop asking for a surplus to be returned. It won’t, and it can’t.
It’s already been wasted by David Eby and the NDP.