Asked for de-identified data on playground injuries and liability claims at B.C. public schools, the Ministry of Finance said compiling it would require significant resources and released a single 2020-21 claims report instead. In that report, six of the eight falls from height that year involved school playground equipment, and the province's school insurance program had paid nothing on any fall claim that year.
The request, FIN-2025-52354, went to the ministry's Risk Management Branch, which runs the Schools Protection Program, the self-insurance program for B.C. school districts. It asked for "aggregated, de-identified records" on "playground related incidents and liability claims for public K–12 school districts across British Columbia." The ministry answered on February 3, 2026, with one 21-page document, the Schools Protection Program Annual Claims Review Report for July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021, released in full. The B.C. government published the package on September 4, 2026.
Government Files analyzes records released under Canada's access-to-information laws. The full documents and how we use them are at the end of this post.
The Ministry Said Building Playground Data Would Take Significant Resources
The response letter is short. It says creating the requested information "from a machine-readable record" held by the ministry "would require significant resources," and cites section 6(2) of B.C.'s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
That section requires a public body to create a record for an applicant only when two conditions are met: the record can be built from a machine-readable record using the body's normal computer hardware, software and technical expertise, and building it "would not unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body." The letter says the ministry has met its duty to assist and is not required to create a record.
It then explains the one document it did send. The 2020-21 annual report, the letter says, is "the only record within the time period that references the specific claim type" in the request. The time period itself is not public: the published version of the request ends with "[specified records]" in place of the details.
The applicant is listed as a business and paid no fees. The letter notes the applicant could ask the Information and Privacy Commissioner to review the decision within 30 business days. Nothing in the published package says whether that happened.
Six of Eight Falls From Height Involved Playground Equipment
Playgrounds come up on one page of the report, inside a category the program calls "Harm – Accidental," the largest group of liability claims. In 2020-21 there were 43 of these claims, 57 per cent of all 76 liability claims that year.
Eight were falls from height. The report says all eight involved students, and six "involved SD playground equipment," giving swings, monkey bars and climbing apparatus as examples. No money was paid on falls from height in 2020-21, and the report says four of the past five reporting periods also ended with nothing paid in that category.
Falls on the same level, such as slips and trips, were the most common accidental-harm claim, at 15. The report says 66 per cent of them happened outside, naming playgrounds, parking lots and walkways together without breaking them out. Three involved visitors rather than students or staff. Nothing had been paid on those claims to date, compared with $103,142 paid the year before.
Playground equipment also appears in two smaller groups, but alongside sports gear. All five claims for contact with a static object involved "sports or playground equipment," as did four of the six claims for contact with a moving, falling or flying object. The report does not separate the two. Counting the six playground falls and those nine mixed claims, 15 of the 43 accidental-harm claims involved playground or sports equipment, or 35 per cent. Only the six falls are attributed to playground equipment alone.
43 Injury Claims, $6,426 Paid, $321,430 Still Set Aside
Across all 43 accidental-harm claims, the program had paid $6,426, an average of about $149 a claim. That figure is not the final cost. The report says 14 of the claims were still open, with a combined reserve of $321,430, roughly 50 times what had been paid, and that paid amounts are expected to rise.
A reserve is the amount an insurer sets aside for what it expects a claim to cost. The report says its figures are a snapshot by the date an incident happened, and that they change as reserves are adjusted, files close and late claims arrive. The report was prepared for an advisory meeting on May 12, 2022, so its 2020-21 numbers reflect where those claims stood then.
All 76 liability claims together had cost $26,502 in paid indemnities. The report calls 2020-21 the year with the lowest number of liability claims and the lowest payments of the five years it tracks. It attributes part of the drop to Covid-19: provincial health orders, families choosing learning at home, and times when "there were few people on school property to be injured." That explanation is the program's own.
Most Reports to the Schools Protection Program Never Become Claims
The numbers above count claims, not incidents. The program received 3,932 reports through its web form in 2020-21. Of those, 242 became claims, about 6 per cent.
The report explains the gap. Every web report is logged as an "event" in the program's claims system, and only matters that need further investigation, or an adjuster or lawyer, are turned into claims. The program counts as claims events open more than 90 days, matters referred to outside counsel in anticipation of possible litigation, and physical losses above the deductible. An injury that is reported but never goes further stays an event and is not in these figures.
That matters for anyone reading the report as a count of playground injuries. It is a count of the playground injuries that became insurance claims. The report does not say how many of the 3,932 events involved a playground.
Liability Claims Fell in Three of Four Years
The report's charts give five years of claim counts. Liability claims went from 121 in 2016-17 to 104, 105, 93 and then 76 in 2020-21, a drop of 37 per cent over the period. Total claims, property and liability together, were 337, 406, 362, 310 and 242.
The rest of the liability picture is small in number. There were 12 discrimination claims, nine of them about disability; five concerned a lack of accommodation for a student's physical or mental disability and four concerned staff. The report says disability has been the most frequent and costly discrimination category for five years. Seven claims alleged intentional harm, three of physical assault or altercation and four of sexual assault or impropriety, with $50,000 in reserves and nothing paid. The report says those numbers have held steady since 2017-18 despite closures.
Most of the program's money went to property. Property claims cost $1,731,426 in 2020-21, against $26,502 for liability. Vehicles, water damage and fire made up most of it, and one roof fire carried an open reserve of more than $3,000,000.
B.C. is not the only province where school incident data has come out through freedom-of-information requests. Records from Nova Scotia showed 23,822 physical violence incidents in that province's schools in eight months, broken down by region, the kind of breakdown this release does not offer for playgrounds.
What's Missing from the Records
The request asked for aggregated playground incident and claims data across B.C. school districts. The release contains none built for that purpose. It has one annual report from one school year, written for an advisory committee, in which playgrounds appear on a single page.
The report does not give a total for playground claims. It does not say which districts or schools the claims came from, what the injuries were, or how many of the 3,932 reported events involved a playground. It does not say how much, if anything, was eventually paid on the 14 open accidental-harm claims, or what any playground fall cost in the years when money was paid.
The report also refers to earlier Annual Claims Review Reports and says each one carries a rolling five-year snapshot. Those reports, and any written since 2022, were not part of this release. The letter says the 2020-21 report was the only record in the requested time period that referred to the claim type, but because the time period is not public, it is not possible to tell which years were searched.
Finally, the release does not say what it would take to build the data the applicant asked for, how long it would take, or what it would cost. The letter says only that it "would require significant resources."
Full Document
The complete records this post is based on are available to download:
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All documents referenced are from the B.C. Ministry of Finance, request FIN-2025-52354, obtained through a Freedom of Information request and published on the B.C. government's Open Information site on September 4, 2026. The records consist of the response letter and the Schools Protection Program Annual Claims Review Report for July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021.
Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions.
This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full above.
