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 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 and 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, 2016 and March 31, 2017. 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 2016-17

In 2016-17, ministry inspectors made a total of 79,849 visits to 34,756 workplaces and issued 118,179 orders.

Table 1: Number of total inspector field visits and orders issued, 2016-17
Program inspector activitiesNumber
Total field visits79,849
Total workplaces visited34,756
Total orders issued118,179

More than half (52%) 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 64% of all orders issued, are an effective way to improve safety and prevent injuries or fatalities.

Table 2: Number of proactive inspector field visit activities and orders issued, 2016-17
Program inspector activitiesNumber
Proactive inspections40,142
Proactive field visit activities41,319
Orders issued75,249
Stop work orders issued4,165

Reactive visits are an essential 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 2016-17, inspectors conducted 38,530 reactive visits which accounted for 48% of all field visits.

Table 3: Number of reactive inspector field visits and orders issued, 2016-17
Program inspector activitiesNumber
Reactive field visits38,530
Orders issued42,930
Stop work orders issued2,816

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.