Saskatchewan Court: Personal Injury Benefits Appeal Valid if Mailed On Time

Saskatchewan court upholds personal injury benefits appeal filed by post When Canada Post loses your mail, should you lose your right to appeal? The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal says no. In Saskatchewan Government Insurance v. Knoke , 2026 SKCA 85 , the court confirmed that a claimant who mails a notice of appeal within the 90-day deadline has done enough to start the appeal process, even if Canada Post never delivers it. Maitlan Knoke sustained injuries in a motor vehicle accident on September 28, 2020. He filed a claim with Saskatchewan Government Insurance (SGI), which issued a decision letter dated February 27, 2023. Knoke received it on March 4, 2023, giving him until June 8, 2023, to appeal. On June 1, 2023, seven days before the deadline, Knoke mailed a notice of appeal by regular mail. When he found out that it never reached the Automobile Injury Appeal Commission (Commission), he sent a second copy, but by then the deadline had passed. The Commission found as fact that Knoke had mailed the notice on June 1, 2023, and that it was lost in transit. SGI did not dispute this finding. Instead, what SGI argued was that the mailing was not enough: in its view, the appeal only began when the Commission received the notice. Since the Commission never received it within the deadline, SGI said there was no valid appeal. Saskatchewan’s no-fault insurance system gives injured people two ways to challenge a decision by SGI about their injury benefits: Both routes have a 90-day deadline from the date of SGI’s written decision, as set out in s. 191(1)(a) of the Automobile Accident Insurance Act ( AAIA ). The two routes are mutually exclusive per s. 191(2) of the AAIA; it means that a claimant who picks one cannot then use the other for the same matter. The Commission route was deliberately designed to be the more accessible path, as laid down in Knoke : That accessibility purpose sits at the heart of why the court ruled the way it did in Knoke . The court dismissed SGI’s appeal and awarded costs to Knoke. The court’s reasoning is grounded in what the AAIA does not say. Sections 191 and 193, which govern the commencement of appeals, use none of the words “file,” “serve,” or “receive.” Yet those words appear throughout other parts of the AAIA and the Personal Injury Benefits Regulations ( PIBR ) for steps that follow the commencement of an appeal, including: The Legislature’s deliberate use of precise language in those later-stage provisions, and its silence on receipt in the commencement provisions, told the court everything it needed to know. As written in the decision: “Nowhere in the words chosen by the Legislature is there any suggestion that receipt of a notice of appeal by the Commission is required to commence the appeal process.” In any case, the ambiguity in a benefits-conferring statute must be resolved in favour of the insured . The court applied the principle from Rizzo & Rizzo Shoes Ltd. (Re) , [1998] 1 SCR 27 , and reaffirmed in Ballantyne v. Saskatchewan Government Insurance , 2015 SKCA 38 . SGI’s concern that this interpretation would open the door to fabricated claims of lost mail did not sway the court. The AAIA’s commencement provisions had been in place for years, and Knoke was the first time this question had reached the Court of Appeal. When a factual dispute about mailing arises, the Commission is well positioned to resolve it, just as it did here. The practical takeaway in this decision is clear: a client who mails a notice of appeal within the 90-day window has commenced their appeal. While claimants must be advised to use tracked or registered mail to avoid any factual dispute, Knoke confirms that regular mail, when proven to have been sent in time, is legally sufficient. Bookmark Canadian Lawyer’s Personal Injury page for more news, articles, and updates for Canadian legal professionals. The Canadian Legal Newswire