Occupational health and safety enforcement April 2015 – March 2016

Message from the Minister of Labour

Workers in our province deserve to go home safe at the end of each day. The Ministry of Labour’s Safe At Work Ontario strategy plays a vital role in helping make this a reality.

Safe At Work Ontario is a ministry initiative for enforcing the Occupational Health and Safety Act. With a focus in 2015–16 on delivery, compliance and collaboration, the strategy is making our province’s workplaces safer. This annual report profiles our enforcement plans, workplace visits and other activities across the province, whether engaging with stakeholders or targeting new and young worker safety, manufacturing hazards, or working at heights in construction, among other initiatives.

Thank you for all your hard work in support of Safe At Work Ontario and workplace health and safety. I look forward to our continuing collaboration and hope you find this report useful and informative.

Sincerely,

Kevin Flynn
Minister of Labour

Message from the Assistant Deputy Minister

Safe At Work Ontario is a proactive strategy to identify and address the highest risks of worker injury or illness. Our inspectors target high-risk sectors and workplaces before a health and safety incident occurs.

Workplaces are safer because of Safe At Work Ontario. We see the results of this initiative every day: better compliance and safer conditions in the workplaces we inspect.

Throughout 2015-16, the Ministry of Labour’s Safe At Work Ontario strategy strove for excellence in delivery, compliance and collaboration. We continued to look for innovative ways to support a workplace health and safety culture and improve compliance with health and safety legislation. For example, we listened to our stakeholders who told us that roofing work – which is high risk for falls and injuries – is often done on weekends. We amended our plans and the construction program responded by conducting a provincial sloped-roof initiative where inspectors made proactive visits to after-hours businesses. This new tactic allowed us to connect with a segment of workers we had not reached in the past. In another unique initiative, the Western Region took a new approach in its small manufacturing initiative, using a combination of education and enforcement to increase compliance through awareness. In the pages of this report, there are many other examples of how inspectors are actively working with workplaces to prevent injuries and improve health and safety.

Workplace safety is everyone’s business. A sustainable workplace health and safety culture needs workplace parties at all levels to make a strong commitment to prevent injuries and illness, and to reduce risk. To achieve our vision of improving the health and safety culture of workplaces while reducing injuries and illnesses, we rely on the help of our health and safety system partners and of engaged workers and workplaces that recognize the vital importance of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

As we look to the year ahead, I would like to thank the health and safety inspectorate for continuing to play a central role in achieving our vision of healthy and safe Ontario workplaces. We recognize all members of our occupational health and safety system for their contribution in 2015-16, and look forward to working collaboratively to create additional value for the province in the future.

Sincerely,

Peter Augruso
Assistant Deputy Minister, Operations, Ministry of Labour

Introduction

Ontario’s occupational health and safety system is committed to creating a health and safety culture where workers return home safe at the end of every work day.

Safe At Work Ontario is a Ministry of Labour initiative to raise awareness of and increase compliance with Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. The Act and its regulations are designed to keep workers safe and healthy.

The Occupational Health and Safety Act sets out the health and safety requirements for workplaces across Ontario and Safe At Work Ontario helps promote safe and healthy workplace practices.

Safe At Work Ontario is a compliance strategy. It consists of the following activities:

• stakeholder engagement to help shape Ontario’s occupational health and safety compliance strategy
• annual sector enforcement plans
• blitzes and initiatives conducted by occupational health and safety inspectors in workplaces based on the annual enforcement plans
• other proactive visits that focus on key hazards in the workplace
• public reporting of blitz and initiative results on our website and in our annual report.

Occupational health and safety inspectors visit workplaces to provide information and to conduct inspections to ensure compliance with health and safety legislation. When a workplace is not complying with a requirement of the Occupational Health and Safety Act and regulations, the inspector will issue an order and the employer must correct the problem within a certain time. If the problem poses an immediate threat to worker health and safety, the inspector will issue a stop work order, which means that work stops until the problem is corrected.

In addition to the proactive visits that are the focus of Safe At Work Ontario, ministry occupational health and safety inspectors also conduct reactive visits to investigate any health and safety incidents in the workplace.

Ontario provides a toll free province-wide telephone number to report unsafe work practices and workplace health and safety incidents. Call the Ministry of Labour Health & Safety Contact Centre at 1 877-202-0008.

• Call any time to report critical injuries, fatalities or work refusals.
• For general inquiries about workplace health and safety, call between 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday,
• In an emergency, always call 911 immediately.

This report describes the ministry’s occupational health and safety enforcement activities between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2016. Most of these activities ran throughout the year; however, blitzes ran for shorter, more intense periods of time (e.g. two to four months) and some activities were multi-year initiatives.

Summary statistics 2015-16

In 2015-16, ministry inspectors made a total of 74,795 visits to 34,284 workplaces and issued 127,088 orders.

More than half (56%) of workplace visits were proactive visits: inspectors going proactively to workplaces in sectors with high hazards and/or vulnerable workers to provide information and education, and to monitor compliance.

Proactive visits, which accounted for 66% of all orders issued, are an effective way to improve safety and prevent injuries or fatalities.

Reactive visits are a critical part of inspectors’ work. The ministry responds to safety issues in the workplace and investigates complaints about violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, work refusals, and reports of critical injuries and fatalities. In 2015-16, reactive visits accounted for 44% of all field visits.

Reactive visits identify and address health and safety issues that contributed to workplace problems, injuries and fatalities. Over the past 10 years, the number of investigations conducted in response to complaints, critical injuries, fatalities and work refusals has increased.

Figure 1: Number of reactive field visits over the past 10 years

Proactive strategy – Safe At Work Ontario

Safe At Work Ontario involves stakeholder engagement, annual sector-specific enforcement plans and proactive compliance and enforcement activities.

Stakeholder engagement

Ongoing stakeholder engagement is key to the Safe At Work Ontario strategy. It helps the Ministry of Labour understand what is happening in workplaces so it can respond quickly to workforce changes. The ministry uses the information gathered during stakeholder consultations as part of the annual planning process for Safe At Work Ontario.

Between November 2014 and February 2015, the ministry sought input from almost 375 representatives and specialists from industries and sectors across Ontario.

In general, stakeholders were very supportive of the ministry’s efforts to improve occupational health and safety in Ontario and its compliance strategy. Stakeholders thought the ministry and its system partners are doing well in providing resources to educate and inform others. They encouraged the ministry to continue efforts to ensure its resources are user-friendly, targeted and accessible (i.e. include details on how to access them). Specific suggestions included:

• Small business packages. A welcome package, including a checklist of minimum requirements, should be given to new businesses when they first register as a business. The ministry can partner with business associations to distribute this information.
• Improving outreach to vulnerable workers. The ministry should continue to make training more accessible and affordable, providing more resources to new/young, vulnerable, part-time and seasonal workers, and workers in non-traditional workplaces. The ministry should also consider publishing multilingual resources and developing partnerships with schools.
• Leveraging media and new technology. The health and safety system should use different communication strategies and tools, including smartphone apps, billboards and media campaigns.

Stakeholders were also interested in implementing a system to reward and recognize good performers, such as a red/yellow/green system, a pass/fail system or health and safety awards for high-performing employers. They also suggested giving high performers tax rebates or other monetary incentives.

During the consultations, stakeholders discussed the need for effective responses to “near-misses” (i.e. where an injury almost took place) and for protection against reprisals. They would also like prevention and enforcement efforts focused on:

• workplace harassment and violence
• occupational diseases caused by exposure to toxic substances such as asbestos, diesel fumes and silica
• musculoskeletal diseases
• mental health.

Comments and discussions are welcome at any time. For more information on the Safe At Work Ontario sessions, please email us at SAWOConsultations@ontario.ca.

Annual sector-specific enforcement plans

As part of Safe At Work Ontario, the Ministry of Labour develops annual sector-specific enforcement plans to focus inspectors’ work and guide their proactive visits. Plans are developed for four sector-specific programs and one unit:

• industrial sector program
• construction sector program
• mining sector program
• health care sector program
• specialized professional services.

In 2016-17, the sector plans include – for the first time – additional background information on hazards in each sector as well as tools and resources to address/reduce those hazards.

The plans also include details about the ministry’s planned blitzes and other health and safety initiatives.

Proactive compliance and enforcement activities

Each year, Safe At Work Ontario conducts a series of proactive health and safety compliance and enforcement activities that target certain hazards in workplaces within each sector. To identify the hazards and the workplaces to target, the ministry uses a risk-based process that takes into account: advice from stakeholders, injury and fatality rates and incidents, the nature of the work (i.e. inherent hazards), the vulnerability of the workers and the sector’s compliance history.

The sector-specific plans identify priorities for proactive visits. They also identify the focuses for initiatives (which occur throughout the year) and blitzes (which occur over a short set period of time, usually between one to four months). Safe At Work Ontario publishes the dates of all blitzes in advance so employers have the opportunity to assess their own compliance and prepare before the inspectors come.

Inspectors involved in proactive compliance and enforcement activities visit workplaces, provide education, conduct inspections and issue orders. The goals are to:

• raise awareness of hazards
• increase workplace compliance with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations
• prevent worker injuries and illness.

In 2015-16, Safe At Work Ontario conducted blitzes and enforcement initiatives to support our compliance strategy. These blitzes and initiatives are described in more detail in the following sections.

See the blitz schedule for ministry initiatives planned for 2016-2017, and the sector-specific plans for more details.

Regions and offices

For occupational health and safety enforcement purposes, the ministry divides Ontario into five regions: Central East, Central West, Eastern, Western and Northern. Occupational health and safety enforcement is delivered through a network of regional offices staffed by inspectors with expertise in the occupational health and safety issues in the industries and sectors in their region. Enforcement activities in each region are tailored to its unique geography and sectors.

Figure 2: Map – Ministry of Labour Enforcement Regions

View a larger version of this map (PDF)

Central East

Central East Region is the most densely populated and one of the fastest growing geographic areas in Canada. It hosts many complex construction projects and has the highest volume and dollar value of building permits in Canada. Toronto leads North American cities in high-rise construction activity with approximately twice as many projects as in the next most active markets: New York City and Mexico City. A large number of hospitals and health care facilities are located in the City of Toronto’s downtown core and the city is home to a thriving tourist industry. Its many hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues employ thousands of workers. Major employers include: Hydro One, Ontario Power Generation (Pickering and Darlington), the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) distribution warehouses and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The region has a dynamic workforce and is headquarters for many trade unions and special interest groups.

Two offices strategically located in North York and Scarborough deliver the ministry’s core business in health and safety and employment standards to the City of Toronto and Durham Region.

Central West

Central West Region covers Peel Region, York Region, Dufferin County and Simcoe County. This diverse, multicultural area is one of the fastest growing parts of Canada. With more than 25 languages spoken in the workplace, inspectors face unique challenges communicating effectively with workplace parties.

This region has some of the largest and most complex construction projects in Ontario. Infrastructure projects currently underway include the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension Project and the York Durham Sewage System Southeast Collector Trunk Sewer.

Large industrial employers include Daimler Chrysler, the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, Coca Cola, Petro Canada, Honda in Alliston, the Beer Store Warehouse, the Loblaws Headquarters, and a large number of hospitals and other health care facilities and school boards.

The ministry has two core locations in the Central West Region: one office in Mississauga and one in Newmarket.

Eastern

Eastern Ontario is made up of 113 municipalities and more than 200 communities. Its two million residents are spread over a large rural area as well as several major urban centres including Ottawa, Cornwall, Kingston and Peterborough. Key sectors are education (six universities, seven community colleges and 18 school boards), health care (42 acute care facilities and 131 long-term facilities) and agriculture. The Eastern Region also attracts millions of tourists each year to popular destinations such as the Rideau Canal, the Thousand Islands and the Trent Severn Waterway.

This region is an important business hub. It has excellent transportation linkages by road, rail and seaway between Canada and the U.S., including Canada’s fifth busiest, U.S. border crossing: the Lansdowne/Alexandria (Thousand Islands Bridge) that connects to Interstate 81. Significant distribution centres include: All-Can Distribution, Black & Decker, National Grocers, Sears National, Shell Canada and Sysco Serca Foods.

Eastern Region’s enforcement is subdivided into five districts. The five district offices operate out of Ottawa, Kingston and Peterborough.

The Eastern Region covers Prescott and Russell, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry, Ottawa, Renfrew, Lanark, Leeds and Greenville, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, Hastings, Prince Edward, Northumberland, Peterborough, Haliburton, Muskoka, Kawartha Lakes.

Western

The Western Region includes the counties of Bruce, Grey, Huron, Wellington, Perth, Brant, Oxford, Lambton, Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Elgin and Haldimand-Norfolk as well as Halton Region, Region of Waterloo, the Niagara Region and the City of Hamilton.

This diverse, geographically demanding region is one of the fastest growing in Canada. It has the second highest number and dollar value of building permits in Canada after the greater Toronto area. The Western Region is home to many diverse complex construction projects, and large numbers of trade unions and special interest groups. Each fiscal year, the number of building permits issued for commercial, industrial and agricultural development in the region exceeds the number for the previous year.

The Western Region also has the largest number of health care, education, steel, auto and transport workplaces as well as significant underground mining (soft rock) and aggregates. The borders and waterways surrounding the region contribute to jurisdictional issues.

The ministry has five offices in the region, located in Hamilton, London, St. Catharines, Waterloo and Windsor. All sites have administrative staff and management present. The region’s Hamilton office also operates the Ministry of Labour’s Health and Safety Contact Centre for the province.

Northern

The Northern Region is the ministry’s largest, covering almost 90% of the province’s land mass. Its vast geography creates many challenges, including large distances to travel to reach workplaces and the distance between major urban centres.

The region’s economy is primarily resource based. In 2015, the forestry, fishing, mining, quarrying, oil and gas industries accounted for close to 7.0% of the North’s total employment compared to only 0.6% for the province as a whole. Mining is a relatively small and highly organized industry in the region; however it is the most complex and diverse in terms of occupational health and safety. Northern Ontario is also more reliant than other regions on public sector employment, including public administration, education and health care. In 2015, these sectors accounted for 31.1% of the North’s total employment - compared to 24.1% for the province as a whole.

The Northern Region has five district offices, one dedicated program office (the Provincial Claims Centre) and one satellite office. With the exception of the Provincial Claims Centre, which handles solely employment standards claims, the district offices provide service to our clients in all Ministry of Labour programs.

The Northern Region covers Nipissing, Parry Sound, Manitoulin, Timiskaming, Sudbury, Algoma, Cochrane, Thunder Bay, Rainy River, Kenora.