Safe At Work Ontario consists of three main activities: 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 2015 and January 2016, the ministry sought input from representatives and specialists from industries and sectors across Ontario.

Stakeholders were generally very supportive of the ministry’s effort to improve occupational health and safety in Ontario and our enforcement strategy. They highlighted the following strengths:

  • Resources to educate and inform others. The ministry and its partner health and safety associations are doing well in providing resources and should continue efforts to ensure resources are user-friendly and targeted. They should provide more details on how to access resources.
  • Changes to the Joint Health and Safety Committee member certification process. Stakeholders say the changes, which includes refresher training every three years and new program standards, are excellent.
  • Advance information on blitzes. Stakeholders find it helpful to receive advance information about blitzes and appreciate the transparency of publishing blitz results.

There were also suggestions for improvement, including:

  • Making training more accessible. The ministry should continue to make training more accessible and provide more resources to: new/young, vulnerable, part-time and seasonal workers; and workers in non-traditional workplaces. Supervisor training should also be more thorough and enforced to ensure supervisor competency.
  • Improving the protocol for field visits. It is important to continue to improve the protocol for field visits, such as ensuring consistency between inspectors and performing visits at a variety of sectors.
  • Helping workplaces prepare for blitzes>. Workplaces would like more tools to help them prepare for blitzes.
  • Providing a clearer definition of critical injury. The definition of “critical injury” should be more specific and standardized so critical injuries are reported accurately.
  • Promoting the Internal Responsibility System. More efforts should be made to educate workplaces about the Internal Responsibility System and engage employers and workers.

Stakeholders would like to see more focus on inspector outreach to new or small/mid-sized businesses. They emphasized the importance of educating and training new, young and vulnerable workers on their health and safety rights in the workplace.

Stakeholders also voiced concerns about emerging hazards such as distracted workers due to new technology, workplace violence and harassment and musculoskeletal disorders.

Comments and discussions are welcome at any time. For more information on the Safe At Work Ontario consultation sessions, please email 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. The plans also provide information on hazards in each sector as well as tools and resources to address/reduce those hazards.

Each year, the ministry develops plans for four sector-specific programs and one unit:

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

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 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 focus 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 2016-17, Safe At Work Ontario conducted a number of blitzes and enforcement initiatives to support our compliance strategy. These blitzes and initiatives are described in more detail in this report.

For more detailed information, see the blitz schedule planned for 2017-2018 as well as the sector-specific plans.

Partnerships and collaborations

Since 2015, the ministry has co-sponsored an initiative with the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to prevent and reduce workplace violence in health care workplaces. This initiative brought key stakeholders and experts together to provide advice on how to reduce and prevent workplace violence against health care professionals. Throughout 2015-16 and 2016-17, the Leadership Table and its working groups developed recommendations and products. A progress report, 23 recommendations and 13 products were released in May 2017.

Collaboration with Health Quality Ontario led to the development of a mandatory hospital reporting indicator on workplace violence, Ontario’s first mandatory reporting indicator for hospitals.