TORONTO - Changes to Ontario's Workplace Safety and Insurance Act will make it easier for firefighters to qualify for compensation for job-related cancers and heart attacks.
New regulations will identify eight types of cancer presumed to be work-related when contracted by full-time firefighters.
Nathan Shaw, whose father died of cancer of the esophagus seven years after fighting a huge fire at a Hamilton plastics company, says he's pleased no other firefighters' families will have to fight for compensation.
Shaw says he hopes he and his mother will be the last family to have to challenge the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.
Under the new regulations, heart-attacks suffered by firefighters within 24 hours of battling a blaze will also be presumed to be work related.
Premier Dalton McGuinty says the 1997 Plastimet fire in Hamilton was the defining moment that gave him a better understanding of the dangers faced by firefighters.
The four-day inferno fed by 400 tonnes of polyvinyl chloride plastics is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in Ontario history.
