After my recent op-ed on WorkSafeBC’s vanishing surplus, a whistleblower reached out. What they shared should make every employer in B.C. furious.
On January 27, 2026, WorkSafeBC informed its entire Field Investigations Division — 20 specially trained fraud investigators — that the department “did not align with WSBC’s strategic priorities” and would be shut down by April 30. The fraud tip line technically still exists, but it’s being monitored by an administrative assistant. Nobody is actioning the tips.
Nobody will be investigating WorkSafe claimants who may be faking, exaggerating or otherwise taking money from the people who actually need it.
British Columbia is about to become the only province in Canada where no one is investigating workers’ compensation fraud.
The whistleblower’s account is damning. Before they killed the unit, they kneecapped it: a 26-step procedure to initiate even basic investigations beyond routine social media searches. A process so absurdly onerous that claims managers stopped making referrals. Oversight by lawyers and managers who, according to investigators, didn’t understand the Workers Compensation Act. Irrefutable evidence of fraud submitted up the chain, only to have upper management pretend it didn’t exist and keep paying benefits.
So first they made the unit too dysfunctional to succeed. Then they pointed to its lack of results as justification for shutting it down.
The investigators didn’t go quietly. They sent a letter to the Labour Minister warning that “allowing fraud to go unchecked will cause lost jobs, lower wages, and higher costs for goods and services — in part because employers are forced to pay higher premium rates to cover increased claim costs.” To date, the Minister has not responded.
More common sense from the letter: “Fraud strains WSBC’s resources and damages our credibility with the public. The Field Investigation department identifies abuses of the system which saves the system an untold amount of money. It will not be possible to maintain a financially sustainable system without investigating and addressing fraud.”
WorkSafeBC’s spin is predictable. They claim fraud work has been realigned to Claims and Rehabilitation Services and Prevention Services, and that they still have a tip line.
Don’t buy it. The investigators themselves say it’s “simply not possible for this work to be absorbed by other untrained departments.” Fraud investigation is a specialized skill. You don’t get good at it by adding it to a claims adjudicator’s to-do list. And parking it inside Prevention Services — the enforcement arm — makes no operational sense. This is reorganization as camouflage.
Think about what this signals. If you’re a bad actor looking to game B.C.’s workers’ compensation system, the province just rolled out a welcome mat. The tip line goes to a voicemail. The investigators are gone. Nobody’s coming to check on you.
And who picks up the tab? Employers. As always. The same people who fund 100% of this system, who’ve driven injury rates down for decades, and who now get to watch the NDP expand WorkSafeBC’s mandate in every direction except the one that protects the fund from theft.
WorkSafeBC must immediately reverse this decision, reinstate the Field Investigations Division, and provide a full public accounting of how many fraud files are now sitting without an investigator. And the Labour Minister should respond to the investigators’ letter and explain why fraud investigation doesn’t align with WorkSafeBC’s strategic priorities.
Employers – also know as WorkSafe’s funders – deserve better than this. But the NDP Government, with their blatant bias against employers, continue to force their political ideology on B.C.’s worker insurance system.