The Daily Commercial News Online

January 27, 2010

Ontario creates panel to review occupational health and safety

Prompted by Christmas Eve swing-stage tragedy

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

The creation of a provincial panel to look at occupational health and safety prevention will bring a necessary focus on Ontario workplace fatalities, says a provincial building trades official.

“Construction deaths, let alone deaths in the general workplace, do not draw the public and press attention they deserve,” said Pat Dillon, business manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario.

The deaths of four construction workers on the afternoon of Dec. 24, 2009, at a Kipling Avenue apartment restoration project site, prompted the Building Trades and other labour groups recently to call for an independent investigator to look at how construction industry practices relate to current provincial work legislation.

The resulting provincial panel is not entirely what those groups had hoped for, but Dillon thinks the panel’s mandate is a positive development.

“The scope is in some ways broader than what we were looking for and I like the idea that it will look at all workplace deaths,” explained Dillon.

The province says the expert advisory panel will research best-in-class approaches to improving workplace safety in national and international jurisdictions and will look at a range of issues, including the continuum of safety practices in a workplace and entry-level safety training, the impact of the underground economy and health and safety practices and how existing legislation serves worker safety.

Tony Dean has been appointed chair of the expert advisory panel, which will consist of safety experts from labour groups, employers and academic institutions to recommend options for structural, operational and policy improvements.

Dean is a former provincial secretary of the cabinet, head of the Ontario Public Service and the clerk of the executive council from 2002 to 2008.

The province says part of the review will be supported by the Institute for Work and Health, a globally renowned and independent research centre for occupational health and safety.

The Expert Advisory Panel will report back to the minister of labour in fall 2010.

In the meantime, the Ontario Ministry of Labour and Toronto Police are continuing their separate investigations into the Christmas Eve swing stage accident.

Dillon said that hopefully these investigations coupled with the work by the expert advisory panel will get to the root of the dangers facing workers.

“Hopefully we will identify what kind of business practices there are out there that are allowing for these kind of tragic incidents,” said Dillon.

“I don’t know if it was bad business practices that led to the Christmas Eve deaths, but obviously there were bad practices of some kind with those deaths and others in the workplace.”

There were 21 construction deaths in Ontario last year.