A result can look fair and still be unreasonable if the decision maker does not explain how the governing policy gets it there.
In Workers’ Safety and Compensation Board v. Sundin, 2026 YKSC 10, the worker had been permanently injured on the job. The dispute concerned the calculation of long term wage loss benefits. His earnings history was unusual because he had recently moved into a substantially better paid position before the injury.
The compensation appeal panel relied on an exceptional circumstances provision and used earnings comparable to the worker's current position rather than the ordinary historical calculation. That produced a materially higher benefit.
The Workers’ Safety and Compensation Board sought judicial review. The Supreme Court of Yukon found the panel's reasoning unreasonable, set the decision aside and returned the matter to a differently constituted panel.
The problem was not simply that the panel reached a generous result. The court found that the panel had not adequately interpreted the policy as a whole or explained why the worker's circumstances fit the exceptional route. The reasons did not provide a sufficiently justified chain from the governing policy to the outcome.
That is a broader administrative decision making lesson. Exceptions usually exist for a reason, but invoking the word exceptional is not enough. A decision maker needs to identify what makes the case different from the ordinary cases covered by the general rule and explain why applying the usual approach would produce the kind of unfair or unintended result the exception was designed to address.
For workers compensation bodies and workplace benefit decision makers, the case reinforces the importance of reasons that engage with the structure of the policy. Consistency matters because similar cases should be treated similarly. Flexibility matters too, but it needs to be anchored in the language and purpose of the exception being used.
The court did not decide the worker's final benefit entitlement. It required a new panel to reconsider the issue with a properly explained application of the governing policy.