The year 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of Toronto’s Hogg’s Hollow disaster. Five Italian construction workers building a water main tunnel were trapped 30 metres below ground and suffocated when their equipment caught fire. A Royal Commission on labour safety brought to the forefront how grossly mistreated immigrant workers were at the time. The Commission — and union demands for action — sparked improvements to workplace safety laws and eventually led to the Ontario Health and Safety Act.

Since the 1960s, Canada’s construction sector has achieved many safety milestones, helped along by changes that benefited all industries — more comprehensive legislation, stricter enforcement, more sophisticated personal protective equipment, and more widespread safety awareness and buy-in among workers and employers. In Ontario, the lost-time injury rate per 100,000 workers decreased from 13 in 1965 to nine in 1980. It rose slightly in the mid-80s, but sharply declined from 1988 to approximately 1.6.

But then it seemed as if the construction industry has taken one step forward, two steps back when another tragedy struck on Christmas Eve 2009: the collapse of a platform at a Kipling Ave. apartment building in Toronto. Four workers fell 13 storeys to their deaths — once again prompting a serious overhaul of safety laws.

Tony Dean, Ontario’s former cabinet secretary, led a year-long review of the province’s occupational health and safety system. The Ministry of Labour conducted a series of inspection blitzes on construction sites and found issues of fall hazards, lack of properly trained staff or supervisors, and broken or inadequate equipment.

The Dean panel review led to 46 recommendations, including mandatory safety training for every Ontario construction worker and a new prevention office reporting directly to the labour minister.

Better way
While disasters have a history of leading to positive change, today’s more proactive health and safety authorities seem to have found better ways to improve safety.

“It’s a big system approach,” says Enzo Garritano, vice-president, technical services for Ontario’s Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA), on what has caused the decrease in construction injuries and fatalities. “It’s a combination of things, including increased awareness of requirements, enforcement and training in the right areas, including supervisory and health and safety representative training,” he says.

While construction remains a hands-on job in many cases, advances in equipment have eliminated certain hazards.

“In the past, heavy form work for buildings was put up piece by piece,” Garritano says. “Now we’re using larger components like fly forms that are used over and over again, or wall forms that are transferrable by machine and don’t have to be dismantled and then put back together.” Even in the low-rise forming sector, he says, the work is still physical but forms are lighter now, with many moved by crane.

Tools have also evolved. “Nailing with a hammer was replaced by an air nailer attached by hose to a compressor; that relieved the burden from the shoulder and elbow but was hard on the wrist and forearm. Now we have lighter, battery- or gas-powered nailers that are significantly better than the old ones.”

He describes legislative improvements that have made their way into most Canadian jurisdictions in one form or another, such as training and competency requirements for workers doing certain work, like equipment operation or handling electrical services. 

Additionally, there are requirements for written programs, assessments and plans for confined space entry; planning a work site in a way that minimizes the need for vehicles to reverse; requirements for respiratory protection or high-visibility clothing, and more. Also, there is now a ban on asbestos, a lethal hazard that still shows up at repair, renovation or demolition sites, but is not used in today’s construction materials.