9 Common Traps & How to Avoid Them
Like most safety coordinators, you understand the importance of investigating workplace incidents thoroughly and accurately. But you might still make critical mistakes when you conduct your investigations. The Insider has done a little investigating of its own and discovered that there are some common traps that safety coordinators and companies fall into when they investigate workplace incidents. Chances are that you have fallen into one or more of these traps yourself. With the help of experts, we’ll tell you what the nine common incident investigation traps are and what you can do to avoid them.

Part 2: 7 Lessons on Supervisors & Due Diligence
Supervisors in every province and territory have a duty to ensure a safe workplace. Last month, we discussed what those duties are. If supervisors violate their duties, they can be charged with OHS offences. And like employers, supervisors charged with OHS offences rely principally on the due diligence defence to avoid liability. Supervisors must prove the same thing as employers to make out the defence—that is, that they took all reasonable steps to prevent the violation and ensure compliance with OHS laws. But while the theory is the same, “reasonable steps” for a supervisor are different from reasonable steps for an employer.

Intensification of Enforcement, New Laws & the Return of C-45

Quote of the Year: “In a nation as advanced as Canada, it’s hard to believe that more than 900 workers die on the job each year.”
Robert M. Griffin, president and CEO of the Canadian Standards Association

Griffin’s quote serves as the perfect backdrop for a retrospective on OHS compliance in 2006. It’s not simply that the remark came in the course of one of the year’s key developments—the unveiling of new Canadian safety systems management standard CSA Z1000-06. Griffin’s quote also furnishes a plausible explanation of what’s behind the biggest compliance story of 2006: the continued intensification of OHS enforcement.

When you think of workers’ compensation (“workers’ comp”) claims, you generally think of a physical injury or disability, such as a broken foot or strained back muscles, or of an occupational disease, such as black lung disease. In fact, when workers’ comp was first enacted, these were the kinds of illnesses and injuries it was designed to cover. But today, claims are being filed for injuries and illnesses that traditional workers’ comp schemes didn’t foresee. A leading example: claims for problems related to mental stress, such as depression and post-traumatic stress. Does workers’ comp cover mental stress claims? Until recently, the laws didn’t address mental stress claims. But most provinces have updated their laws. This article will explain the law of mental stress claims. We’ll also tell you what factors courts and workers’ comp boards consider when evaluating a mental stress claim. And there’s a chart on here spelling out what the workers’ comp law of each province says about mental stress.

Part 1: What the OHS Laws Require ‘Supervisors’ to Do
Canadian OHS laws are based on a theory called the “Internal Responsibility System” (IRS). Under the IRS, all workplace stakeholders—from upper management to floor workers—are required to play a role in ensuring a healthy and safe workplace. It’s no surprise that supervisors are included in this group. Like other stakeholders, supervisors who fail to meet their health and safety responsibilities face the risk of prosecution and fines. Supervisor liability isn’t just a theory. Supervisors are being prosecuted and fined with increasing regularity not only in Ontario and Alberta (the traditional hotbeds of supervisor liability) but also across Canada. So it’s important to understand the duties of supervisors under the various OHS laws, as well as under Bill C-45. We’ll tell you what those duties are and give you a chart that spells out the specific duties of a supervisor under each province’s and territory’s OHS laws. In Part 2 we discuss how the concept of due diligence relates to supervisors charged with violating their OHS and C-45 duties.