December 22, 2011

KELLY LAPOINTE

Linda Jeffrey, Ontario’s labour minister, far left, and George Gritziotis, Ontario’s chief prevention officer, right, take in a trades demonstration during a recent provincial announcement.

Ontario labour department pushes workplace safety awareness

KELLY LAPOINTE

staff writer

A provincial occupational health and safety program designed to increase worker awareness of their workplace safety rights in Ontario has been launched.

Ontario’s Chief Prevention Officer George Gritziotis and Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey announced the “Prevention Starts Here” program which introduces workers to the provincial Occupational Health and Safety Act through an e-learning program, workbook and posters.

Raising awareness is one of 46 recommendations made by Tony Dean and his expert advisory panel which reviewed Ontario’s occupation health and safety enforcement and prevention system last year. Some recommendations were designated as priorities, among them, the appointment of a Chief Prevention Officer. Gritziotis is the first to hold such a role.

Gritziotis said he would have liked to see the recommendations made in the Dean report implemented “yesterday”.

“When it comes to prevention and health and safety, we’ve got to start doing this as quickly as possible. In my mind everything is a priority,” he said.

KELLY LAPOINTE

George Gritziotis, Ontario's CPO.

Gritziotis said the Dean report will be the foundation for developing a provincial occupational health strategy.

“Safety shouldn’t be about only looking at training educators and coming up with solutions,” he said.

“It should also be about how can we better target our capacity and how can we extend our capacity with a better understanding of what the future looks like.”

Dean said in the year since the release of his report, there has been significant progress made in health and safety.

“This was never going to move as fast as we’d ideally like it to, but it has moved and it’s moved significantly,” he said, pointing to the passing of Bill 160, the Occupational Health and Safety Statue Law Amendment Act, 2011, on June 1, 2011 and to the appointment of Gritziotis as Chief Prevention officer and Associate Deputy Minister for the Ministry of Labour in mid-October.

Dean said he was “delighted” to see how eager people from industry, the world of business, the labour movement and the workplace health and safety system, stepped forward to contribute to the work of the panel.

“The spirit of getting things done together, moving things forward, that spirit is key as we move forward now to implementation,” he said.

“One of the things that has marked this process throughout, and I think it remains true today, is the sense on the part of everybody out there that this is an important opportunity to improve the situation for workers in workplaces.”

Dean warned that health and safety is not a place that should become political.

“If we maintain a focus on workers and workplace safety and have that as our common focus and to some extent, leave our institutional affiliations on the borders, we’re going to make significant progress,” he said.

Also released was a draft governance framework for consultation for a permanent prevention council. Stakeholders can review it until mid-January, followed by a release of nominations for members. Gritziotis hopes it will be up and running sometime in February.

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