Ministry of Labour (MOL) inspectors enforce the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) and its regulations at workplaces across the province. As part of the Safe At Work Ontario strategy, they focus on specific industry sectors where there are:

  • high injury rates
  • history of non-compliance, or
  • certain workplace hazards.

Occupational health and safety inspectors:

  • conduct proactive and reactive field visits, in either a lead or a support role
  • investigate each reported event, in part by conducting reactive field visits and issuing orders, as required. This may include multiple field visits, including workplaces not categorized within their own occupational health and safety program.

The ministry maintains a database where inspectors record their visits to workplaces in conducting inspections, consultations and investigations, along with orders issued. Events that are reported to the ministry, including fatalities, critical injuries, complaints, work refusals, etc., are also recorded.

The MOL analyzes available data when planning for enforcement initiatives and blitzes such as those outlined in this sector plan. A breakdown of the field visit activities conducted by inspectors and key categories of reported events for the past five fiscal years are presented in the tables below. 

A summary of activities of inspectors within this program, including those conducted as part of the Safe At Work Ontario blitzes and initiatives, is provided in Table 1.

Table 1: Construction inspector field visit activities and orders issued
Program inspector activities 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017
Proactive − consultations 619 523 426 396 412
Proactive − inspections 20,923 19,450 20,197 17,154 19,123
Total proactive field visits 21,542 19,973 20,623 17,550 19,535
Total reactive field visits  − investigations 7,684 7,566 7,392 8,136 9,403
Total field visits 29,229 27,539 28,015 25,686 28,938
Orders issued 59,670 61,877 63,859 49,884 50,861

Notes:

  • “Proactive field visits” are either inspections or consultations. 
  • “Reactive field visits” are investigations made in response to events reported to the MOL. Events and injuries are listed in Table 2.
  • “Orders issued” represent all those issued by ministry inspectors within this occupational health and safety program.
  • Data subject to change due to updates in the enforcement database.

Occupational health and safety events and injuries reported to the Ministry of Labour are summarized in Table 2. Only events reported to the ministry are included here. Except for fatalities, event categories in the ministry’s data set are based on what was assigned at the time of the initial report to the ministry. The reported event category may not represent what actually occurred at the workplace.  

Table 2:  Construction Health and Safety Program events and injuries
Occupational health and safety events and injuries 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017
Complaints 4,402 4,337 3,976 5,529 6,579
Work refusals 10 8 8 14 19
Fatalities 12 19 22 16 16
Critical injuries  215  231 180 158 206
Other injuries (i.e., non-critical) 570 673 569 548 639

Notes:

  • Fatalities: The Ministry of Labour tracks and reports fatalities at workplaces covered by the Occupational Health and Safety Act. This excludes death from natural causes, death of non-workers at a workplace, suicides, death as a result of a criminal act or traffic accident (unless the OHSA is applicable) and death from occupational exposures that occurred many years ago. 
  • Critical injuries: The critical injury numbers represent critical injuries reported to the ministry and not necessarily critical injuries as defined by Regulation 834 – Critical Injury – Defined under the OHSA. Non-workers who are critically injured may also be included in ministry data.
  • Data subject to change due to updates in the enforcement database.
Table 3: Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) Allowed Lost Time Injuries
Construction sectorfootnote 2 2012 2013 2014 2015
Allowed Lost Time Claimsfootnote 3 4,212 4,424 4,331 4,271
Lost Time Injury (LTI) Ratefootnote 4 1.37 1.21 1.13 1.09

Note:

Footnotes

  • footnote[2] Back to paragraph WSIB Schedule 1 construction industry sector classification.
  • footnote[3] Back to paragraph Industry Sector Allowed Lost Time Claims by Injury/Illness year (Schedule 1 of the  WSIB Statistical Report).
  • footnote[4] Back to paragraph LTI rate is allowed LTI per 100 workers in that year (Schedule 1 of the  WSIB Statistical Report).