It is still too early to determine the full implications of the report, however, federal sector trade unions and workers’ rights advocacy groups are likely to use the report to lobby for reform in monitoring, inspection and enforcement of federal workplace health and safety.  If they are successful, this report could provide the basis for the next significant evolution in workplace health and safety enforcement in Canada.   

The report relies on interviews with Labour Affairs Officers (LAOs), federal sector health and safety inspectors and key statistics, such as workplace injuries and fatalities, to show that while the provinces have been successful in creating safer workplaces, workplace injuries in the federal sector appear to be on the rise. The report points to important systemic differences in the way federal workplaces are regulated to account for the disparity.

The report notes that fatality and injury rates in the provincial sector have declined 25 per cent from 2002 to 2007, while federal injury rates have risen five per cent over the same time period.

The increase is particularly startling in light of the fact that almost half of federal sector workers work for the federal government or in the banking industry and 76 per cent of those workers work in office settings which generally have lower fatality and injury rates. 

The report highlights the significant rates of disabling injuries in the road and air transportation sectors, and postal delivery sector. It attributes these statistics to a failure in federal health and safety enforcement. Unlike provincial occupational health and safety authorities, federal enforcers have not made concerted efforts to target high risk workplaces, set workplace injury reduction targets, and hire more inspectors to inspect workplaces and enforce the health and safety provision in Part II of the Labour Code to, as the report’s author puts it, “keep offending employers in line.”

Overworked, underpaid
This failure in federal occupational health and safety enforcement is found to be due, in part, to overburdened LAOs. LAOs are charged with providing preventative services, such as education and monitoring, as well as performing enforcement functions in the federal sector.

The report notes that in 2008, there were just 128 LAOs responsible for monitoring and inspecting federal workplaces where over one million workers work. This understaffing has resulted in very low inspection rates. Only 16 per cent of federal workplaces classified as very high risk received two inspections per year and only 10 per cent of federal workplaces classified as high risk received one inspection per year as mandated by Labour Program guidelines.

Chronic understaffing is particularly dangerous under the voluntary compliance model adopted by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). To ensure compliance with an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance (AVC) — a document that identifies a health and safety violation and the steps that the employer volunteers to take to rectify the situation — LAOs must re-attend at the workplace. According to the report, this important follow-up step often does not occur because LAOs are understaffed and overworked.

The report also notes that LAOs are underpaid relative to other safety professionals. In fact, 91 per cent of Canadian safety professionals earn more than the best paid LAOs. Even when compared against safety professionals in the public sector, LAOs are reported to be among the 12 per cent who are worst paid.

Voluntary compliance
LAOs interviewed by the report’s author, attributed lax enforcement of health and safety standards and the rise in fatality and injury rates, in part, to HRSDC’s client-centric approach to health and safety enforcement. The client-centric approach strives to convince employers to voluntarily comply with health and safety obligations, rather than by coercing employers through other methods such as prosecution. 

The report suggests that while the client-centric approach is valuable in some situations, fostering voluntary compliance must be coupled with preventative inspections and harsh enforcement penalties, particularly for repeat offenders and high-risk workplaces. 

According to the report, LAOs who seek to move from voluntary to coercive compliance measures face resistance from HRSDC officials. HRSDC encourages LAOs to issue numerous AVCs rather than issuing a direction, a legally binding order requiring the employer to take some action, which may lead to a prosecution. This is because HRSDC’s performance metrics view coercive measures, such as issuing directions and prosecuting employers, as failures of the client-centric voluntary compliance model. As a result, LAOs who seek to move to coercive compliance measures often lack the support of HRSDC officials.