David Clegg is trapped. By now, the Calgarian is deeply enmeshed in Alberta's bureaucracy, desperate for treatment for a debilitating neurological condition stemming from a workplace injury. It has been four years since his fall, and he says the final fragments of hope for an end to his anguish are slipping with each passing month.
After surviving the grind of an appeal system, delays, administrative errors and a churn of case managers at the province's workplace insurance agency, he is cornered into an impossible choice. He can endure the physical agony indefinitely while receiving 90 per cent of his lost wages from the Workers' Compensation Board — or forfeit the benefits that keep food on the table for a chance to enter a years-long waitlist to finally see a neurologist.
“They have no path to getting me to see a neurologist, and so I'm left unable to access the public system because I'm on WCB and unable to get WCB to do their job and send me for treatment,” said Clegg, who began working as a siding installer in late 2021 after losing his job as a software developer at a private insurance company.
The Accident and Its Aftermath
Clegg's tale begins on May 17, 2022, when he was applying trim to a window of a house in Strathcona Park. As he worked his way around the structure, the ladder beneath him kicked out. He fell, breaking his nose, shattering his wrists and injuring his skull. His employer transported him to the South Health Campus, where he was later discharged on the same day with a cast on his left arm.
Clegg couldn't return to work and launched an insurance claim with WCB. His arm was wrapped in various casts for three months as he juggled appointments with his family doctor and physiotherapists.
Back to Work Program
In December 2022, he was enrolled in a WCB “Back-to-Work” program, in which he was required to lift weights and perform various exercises under the guidance of kinesiologists and physiotherapists to prepare for his job. It was the period when pain in Clegg's neck began to intensify.
Clegg was deemed fit to work by WCB, but his wife, Kimberley Karpenko, was worried. He was still in pain and had been feeling dizzy, which was documented in his file with WCB.
“It was normal in his work for him to be on ladders or on scaffolding or in really high spaces, and it really concerned me that he was being approved to return to a job at height when he was still very dizzy,” Karpenko said. “So that was very nerve-wracking for me.”
Subsequent Injury and Denied MRI
Soon after returning to his job, on Jan. 10, 2023, Clegg suffered another injury on his wounded wrist while swinging a hammer to remove a house's gutters that were fastened with nails. In the same month, his family doctor sent a requisition for an MRI for November 2023, which was rejected by WCB, whose claims manager mistakenly stated the examination was meant for the previous year and assumed the test had already been conducted.
“I've had a number of clients just within recent memory, like say within the last year or two, who have said something to the effect of 'WCB has destroyed my life,'” said an anonymous source familiar with similar cases.
