Law Society June 27, 2002 The Law Society is attacking the practice of lay representation before administrative tribunals of the WCB. In a letter to Geoff Plant , Attorney General, they set out their position that representation of employers and workers before the Appeal Division and the Workers Compensation Review Board was the purview of lawyers but failed to address the central issue that the Workers Compensation Act came about so as to remove worker's compensation from the arena of the courts and from the hands of lawyers.  In their letter the Law Society stated that they take action when they receive complaints about the services provided by consultants. They stated that action is taken to protect the public from unregulated and uninsured consultants, they raised the matter of training, guidance and defalcation protection. What the Law Society did not say was  that in two cases presently ongoing no complaint was made by an unhappy client who had paid for services they did not receive. Those two cases arose out of complaints by an unhappy lawyer, one assumes because he was being bested in the appeal. In the case of McNeill group, Consultants Ltd. the client was very happy with the service and had been happy for a considerable number of years. The Law Society stated that their intent was to protect the public from defalcation in other words embezzlement. The matter of defalcation is a red herring when applied to consultants who work for employers. Embezzlement cannot take place unless the embezzler has access to funds for which a service has yet to be given and/or trust funds. That is not the case. No monies change hands  until a service is performed. Therein lies the accountability, employers have the wherewithal and the will to demand and receive acceptable service before paying any fees and to refuse to pay if they are not satisfied. Consultants working for employers' are regulated by the market, employers know what is required in dealing with the WCB, they are cognizant of the Board's policies and could easily have a representative on staff. However they  find it more cost effective to hire a consultant than to have a full time staff member. The consultants working with employers have all come from the ranks of the WCB, they have many years of training and experience behind them. I was an adjudicator for four years and an Area Office Manager for eight years responsible for training and overseeing a staff of four adjudicators and two Claims Officers, my training was thorough and ongoing. My responsibilities as a Area Office Manager required quality review of the adjudicator's and Claims Officer's work. The Law Society refers to union representatives and the worker's and employer's advisers and states that these people are trained and receive guidance, that may well be true of the worker's and employer's advisers but their training is no different than any of the employer community consultants and in many cases their experience is less. You should ask yourself this simple question, if the employer's advisers office is better prepared to give the employer community proper advice and representation in WCB matters than consultants and at no cost why are employers hiring consultants? The Law Society's comments with respect to union representatives does not stand up to scrutiny, many union representatives have no training or experience and their guidance comes at the hands of the very tribunals before whom they appear. They are in the main union employees or politicians, not trained WCB representatives when they first appear. In a letter dated 03 Apr 97 Mr. Bryan F. Ralph wrote to the then Minister of Labour, The Honourable John Cashore, on behalf of the Law Society in response to a letter from Mr. Dave Robertson, Chair of the Employers Forum to the WCB.   Mr. Ralph raised many of the points raised in the current letter. He went further, it would appear from his letter that it was acceptable to the Law Society if labour representatives who are paid a wage (a reward or gain) by the union acted on behalf of the members of the union who provide their wages through union dues. He did not see this as the same thing as charging a fee, direct or indirect. It is a distinction that I would submit is not there. By implication then a representative of an association of employers, who paid the wage of that representative, would also not be in breach of the Legal Profession Act if that person was to act on behalf of a member of the association. How that is different than the employer paying the representative directly escapes me. It would seem from the rest of Mr. Ralph's letter that the sole concern was money changing hands not the quality of the service or its propriety. The facts of the matter are that consultants for employers are simply contract workers who do the job that a regular worker of the employer would have to do with little training or experience except that gained on the job. The employer gains from the relationship and they are quite happy with the service provided. No vulnerable member of the public is at any risk. The Employers Forum has once again come forward to support the work of consultants in the narrow field of WCB representation, Mr. Ian May, the current Chair of that body, wrote to the Minister of Labour in that regard. This government should act expeditiously to ensure that that service for employers remains available to them. But to date the government has sat on its hands. More