Traffic Accident Is Work Related Even If Worker Isn’t Doing Ordinary Job Duties

An injured electrician was told she could return to work as long as she produced a doctor’s note assessing her medical capabilities. She got the letter and was in the process of delivering it to her employer when she got into a motor vehicle accident. The WCB said the MVA wasn’t work-related and the Workers Comp Appeals Tribunal (WCAT) agreed. True, she was doing a task for her employer, the WCAT acknowledged, but the task wasn’t related to her ordinary work duties. But the electrician had the last laugh when the PEI Court of Appeal reversed the ruling. Having found that the electrician was carrying out a task for the employer, the WCAT should have found the accident work-related without considering the nature of the task and whether it was part of her ordinary work duties [McNeil v WCAT (PEI), 2021 PECA 9 (CanLII), May 19, 2021].