The following cartoon was printed in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.
This is a response from Karl Crevar, which he sent to the newspaper and many others throughout Ontario and Canada:
Your cartoon shows an injured worker on a wheelchair not wanting to be healed because he is getting workers’ compensation.
Only the jerks would laugh. Do you realize how offensive this is?
Other media have covered the sad truth about injured workers, surely your paper is aware of the number of injured workers out there and the 250 fatalities that happen from work every year. To suggest that injured workers are “fakers” is outrageous and borders on slander. I would suggest you do some investigative journalism instead. Talk to the real injured workers and their families. Find out the truth about the pain, the poverty and the stigma. Satire is important but offending peoples’ human rights is not only insensitive, it is illegal.
Yours sincerely,
Karl Crevar