CNESST personalized rate simulator

Yes. Choose your classification unit, enter your insurable wages and leave the other fields at 0: the simulator applies the unit rates based on risk and the experience ratios the CNESST publishes for that unit. All that is left to enter is your retained costs — the cost of your injuries, which only you know. The result is flagged as reconstructed, so that you know what it is worth.

On your Notice of Calculation of Personalized Rates, sent by the CNESST in the autumn for the following year. The short-term and long-term unit rates based on risk appear in the section of that name; expected costs and retained costs are shown by reference period. If you belong to a prevention mutual, your manager has a copy of the notice. Every value you enter replaces the published one.

Enter them, when you have them. The calculation is the same — the year's insurable wages multiplied by the unit's experience ratio — but the CNESST applies it to the wages actually declared for each year of the reference period, and takes your participation in a prevention mutual into account. The reconstruction starts from the wages you enter and assumes stable wages for any year you leave blank. For a business whose payroll has barely moved, the gap is marginal; for one that has doubled in three years, it is not. Fill in each year separately in that case.

Not directly. In 2026, an employer whose short-term expected costs are under $1,660 a year — roughly $10,000 in annual premium — is assessed at the unit rate, with no personalization. Their rate therefore does not depend on their own record. The simulator tells you when that is your case. The exercise stays useful if your payroll is growing, though: you will cross the threshold, and your record will start to count.

Three years in the short-term period, three years in the long-term period, with a lag of about two years before it enters the calculation at all. A costly injury therefore affects your ratemaking across several consecutive years — which is why the saving is measured over three years rather than one.

Three possible causes, in order of frequency. An older injury whose costs kept running — income replacement indemnities, a relapse, rehabilitation. A unit rate that rose independently of you, because your whole sector deteriorated. Or an increase in your insurable wages, which raises your expected costs, your degree of personalization, and therefore the weight of your own record.

The formula is the one in the 2026 employer's guide and it is verified automatically, before each publication of the site, against the full worked example the CNESST publishes — the twelve intermediate values are reproduced, once from the figures on the notice and once from the classification unit alone. Any gap comes from what you entered, not from the calculation: adjustment factors for recalculations, cost sharing, particular imputations, classification in several units. Only the assessment notice is authoritative.

No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser: insurable wages, injury costs and rates are sent to no server and are stored nowhere. Closing the tab erases them. The share link encodes the values in the address — so only circulate it if you are willing to share those figures.