Slipping on the Ramp After Picketing: Workplace Accident or Not? The Tribunal Rules

On November 22, 2023, around 8 a.m., Valérie Fortin arrives at her workplace. She has been a special education worker at CIUSSS Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean — Domaine-du-Roy for several years. She enters through the main door, the one used daily by employees, goes to her desk, and checks her calls.

Around 8:30 a.m., she steps back outside. A strike is underway, and she is to do two hours of picketing with her colleagues, on a section of the employer's grounds set aside for that purpose.

When her picketing time is up, she leaves the group of strikers and heads back to the building to return to her duties. She opens the entrance door, steps onto the metal ramp at the threshold — and slips.

She gets up, reports the event to her employer the next day, and at first tries to manage the pain on her own with anti-inflammatories. But about two weeks after the fall, nausea, dizziness, severe headaches, and visual disturbances are added to her lower back and neck pain. A colleague suggests she go to the emergency room. She presents on December 14, 2023.

The diagnoses come in: lumbar and cervical sprains, mild traumatic brain injury. The following week, her family doctor, Dr. Andréanne Bonin-Carignan, confirms these diagnoses and recommends a work stoppage.

Ms. Fortin files a claim with the CNESST. Refused. Administrative review requested. Refusal confirmed on April 15, 2024. Reason given: lack of evidence to conclude that the injuries occurred by the act of, or in connection with, the work.

It is this refusal that brings the worker before the Quebec Labour Tribunal.

Section 2 of the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases defines a workplace accident as a sudden and unforeseen event, attributable to any cause, occurring to a person by the act of or in connection with their work, and resulting in an employment injury.

In Ms. Fortin's case, the first branch is quickly set aside: at the moment she slipped, she was not performing her duties as a special education worker. The accident therefore did not occur by the act of work.

That leaves the other branch — accidents occurring in connection with work. And this is where the analysis becomes interesting, because this notion is not defined in the Act.

Case law has filled this gap. Since the 1995 decision Plomberie & chauffage Plombec inc. et Deslongchamps, rendered by the former Commission d'appel en matière de lésions professionnelles, tribunals have assessed this notion using six criteria:

None of these criteria, taken alone, is decisive. The tribunal assesses them globally, taking into account the circumstances specific to each case. But as Judge Lajoie reminds us, citing the decision Roberts and Centre d'Hébergement St-Margaret, two criteria occupy a central place: the purpose of the activity engaged in and its degree of connection with the performance of the work.

In other words: what was the activity for, at the moment of the accident, and how closely was it tied to the worker's job?

The line that needs to be drawn is the one between the professional sphere and the personal sphere. In the first, the accident is compensable. In the second, it is not.

Before the Tribunal, the employer deploys a predictable line of argument. Rather than discussing the precise circumstances of the fall, it steers the debate toward the strike, the picketing, and union activities. The objective is clear: if the tribunal agrees to view the fall through the lens of the labour conflict, then the event tips into the personal sphere — and the claim collapses.

Administrative Judge Valérie Lajoie does not take the bait. In a single sentence, she resets the frame:

The precision of the moment becomes decisive here. The evidence establishes that when Ms. Fortin climbs the ramp and falls, her picketing time is over. She has left the group of strikers. She has walked the few metres separating the picketing area from the building. She opens the door. And the testimony is unequivocal as to what follows: as soon as she gets up from her fall, she goes directly to her office and begins working.

The activity she is engaged in at the moment of slipping is therefore not a union activity. It is a professional activity: entering her workplace to carry out her duties.

Once the false debate is set aside, the tribunal methodically applies the six Plombec criteria to the facts of the case.

The location. The fall occurs on the access ramp of the employer's building, at the main door used daily by employees. "There is no doubt that the accident occurred on the employer's premises," the judge holds.

The time. Although the exact hour remains imprecise, the evidence establishes that the picketing time was over at the moment of the fall. The worker was not yet at her regular work — but she was on her way there.

The pay. The period between 8:30 a.m. and 10:36 a.m. was not at the employer's financial expense. But because the picketing was already finished when the fall occurred, it is possible the worker was being paid at that precise moment. The judge considers this criterion not to be decisive.

Authority. Since the union activities had ended and the worker was making her way to her office, it can be inferred that she was then under the employer's authority. This criterion is also considered secondary in the circumstances.

Purpose, connection, and usefulness. This is where the case is decided. The tribunal analyzes these criteria together:

The tribunal's conclusion: the worker is in her professional sphere at the time of the accident. The event did indeed occur in connection with her work.

Once it is established that the accident occurred in connection with the work, it must still be shown that this accident actually caused an employment injury. On this point, the medical evidence is clear and uncontradicted.

The tribunal first notes the worker's physical condition at the time: excellent shape, several sports practiced regularly, and coaching of sports teams for many years.

The mechanism of the fall — feet sliding backward, fall broken on the wrists, shins striking the doorstep, cervical hyperextension whiplash to avoid the boot-cleaning mat — is found to be compatible with the diagnoses retained: lumbar and cervical sprains, mild traumatic brain injury.

The tribunal also addresses an element the defence might have used: the worker waited about three weeks before going to the emergency room. But this delay has an explanation. She first took anti-inflammatories, hoping the symptoms would ease. She kept working. Her sports activities, however, were stopped. And her family duties were slowed. When nausea, dizziness, severe headaches, and visual disturbances were added to the pain — about two weeks after the fall — the consultation became unavoidable.

In the absence of a formal medical evaluation procedure under the Act, the tribunal is bound by the diagnoses retained by the physician treating the worker. The conclusion follows: those diagnoses are the consequence of the November 22, 2023 event.

From a strictly legal standpoint, the Fortin decision invents nothing. It rigorously applies principles known since 1995 and consistently reaffirmed since. But it illustrates something important for Quebec workers: the precise moment of an accident can change everything.

If Ms. Fortin had fallen while picketing, the analysis would have been very different. The union sphere would likely have prevailed over the professional sphere. But she fell after, on her way back to her office. And it is that difference of a few minutes that separates a denied claim from a recognized employment injury.

The decision also reaffirms an underestimated principle of labour law: going to one's post is part of the professional sphere, as soon as one is on the employer's premises and about to perform one's duties. The simple act of crossing an access ramp, in this logic, is not a trivial gesture of private life — it is a gesture connected to and useful for the work.

Finally, the rejection of the "false debate" sends a signal to employers and their counsel: a claim cannot be defeated by steering the discussion toward a context that has nothing legally to do with the moment of the accident. If the worker is no longer picketing when she falls, picketing carries no weight. The strike may colour the factual backdrop of the day — it does not change the nature of the activity engaged in at the precise moment of the accident.