On May 18, 2011, the Ontario Legislative Assembly passed Bill 160, the Occupational Health & Safety Statute Law Amendment Act, 2011. Most of the Bill’s provisions will take effect when it receives royal assent. However, some sections will take effect on either April 1, 2012, or a date set by the lieutenant-governor, whichever is earlier.
Bill 160 amends the Occupational Health & Safety Act and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act to allow the Ministry of Labour to take the lead for accident/injury prevention, transferring this role from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB). It will also lead to the appointment of a new Chief Prevention Officer (CPO) to coordinate and align the prevention system. Bill 160 will allow the Ministry of Labour to create a new prevention council to advise the CPO and the labour minister on health and safety matters, with representatives from labour, employers, employees, the WSIB and safety experts.
The changes also give the Minister of Labour, through the CPO, oversight of the province’s health and safety associations as well as the education, training and promotion of workplace health and safety standards.
Key provisions that will impact employers directly include:
- Employers with 6 to 19 employees will now be required to provide mandatory training to enable the health and safety representatives to effectively exercise their powers and perform their duties, similar to the current required training for members of a joint health and safety committee (JHSC). This training must meet any requirements that will be set by the Chief Prevention Officer, and the employer must pay the representatives while they are attending training.
- The CPO will advise the Ministry of Labour on the mandatory training and certification standards that members of joint health and safety committees must fulfill in order to become certified. There is a possibility that the ministry will require all members of the JHSC undergo training and be certified. Currently, for organizations employing between 20 to 50 employees, only one worker member and one management member of the JHSC are required to receive certification training.
- Currently, a JHSC has the authority to make recommendations as a committee to the employer on health and safety matters. Bill 160 will allow either co-chair (certified employee or management member) of a JHSC to offer their own written recommendations to an employer if the committee fails to reach consensus after a good faith effort to do so. However, the employer must be provided with a summary of the positions of both sides and information on how the committee members tried to reach a consensus.
What’s Next?
Many companies have started to receive calls from training providers trying to sell them mandatory training packages that will be required when Bill 160 comes into force. Note that for now, the new training standards for health and safety representatives have not yet been established by the Ministry of Labour and Chief Prevention Officer. It will take a while for the CPO to implement the provisions under Bill 160. Once the specific training requirements are released, you will know what health and safety training your employees will need.
WSIB is still responsible for the enforcement of the First Aid Regulation (all employers who are subject to the Occupational Health and Safety Act must comply with First Aid Regulation 1101 under Section 3 of the Workplace Safety & Insurance Act) and the Workwell program (on-site health and safety audits of firms when their experience rating indicates that there is a higher risk of injury at their workplace compared to other firms doing similar work). These two topics may be transferred to the Ministry of Labour; for now, however, they remain under the banner of the WSIB.
Bill 160 only addresses some of the recommendations from the Expert Advisory Panel to improve the Ontario occupational health and safety system. More changes are underway in the form of further legislation, regulation and administrative changes in the next few years.
Source: Yosie St-Cyr, First Reference Talks, June 1, 2011