HALIFAX – The Canadian Society of Safety Engineering (CSSE) kicked off its annual Professional Development Conference in this city with a keynote from the guy who literally had a picnic on the deck of the Titanic.

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) was a start-up employer in 2005. It would become a unique sort of employer, one that had a single purpose and would cease to exist once the job was done. It was in the process of forming a tight team of hard-working, keen people.

In those early days, VANOC’s then-small organizing committee of about 50 people became aware, through the Olympic grapevine, of occupational injuries and fatalities in previous Games in other countries.

Young workers going into a new job will be asking questions about their safety and it won’t hurt for their would-be supervisors to be prepared with helpful answers. Work Safe Alberta’s BloodyLucky.ca, a website dedicated to raise safety awareness among young workers, lists five questions that new and young workers should ask their employer when starting a new job.

Are your supervisors and managers confident they can adequately answer these five life-saving questions?

The use of online training for employee education programs has spiked in recent years as scores of companies recognize the flexibility and lower cost of rolling out these types of courses compared to traditional face-to-face instruction methods.

However, not all online courses are created equal and when it comes to occasionally tactile and skill-driven courses such as health and safety training, finding the appropriate mix of Web-based and in-person teaching strategies is essential.

Hot Zone Training Consultants has a creative way of making a point. At the Health and Safety Canada 2008 trade show, the Cambridge, Ont.-based training firm featured two young men with facial prosthetics that show burnt faces. Hot Zone’s Peter White says part of what his company offers is integrating realistic types of injuries into the actual training programs. White says the company has just opened a new training facility in Cambridge to complement its on-site training for customers. The new training school includes a confined space rescue simulator, where clients can come in and practice vertical and horizontal rescues, he says. 

[Watch: confined space training demonstrations] 
www.hotzonetraining.com

The Municipal Health and Safety Association conducts confined space training for municipal emergency services, such as the fire service, police and paramedics, according to John Parish, chief of emergency services for the association. A 40-foot container sitting on a flatbed trailer serves as the MHSA’s confined space mobile training unit that travels throughout the province to bring training to the client. The interior of the container has been built to simulate actual confined space conditions, with piping, chambers and flumes for realistic hands-on training, the MHSA says.

[Watch: confined space training demonstrations] 
www.mhsao.com

My mother recently passed away. In my sorrow, I couldn’t help but reflect on the many things my mom taught me. Many of those important life lessons were about safety. Not in the industrial sense, but those lessons on safety for the good of me as an individual. There is no possible way that my dear mother could have known when she was teaching me these “safety lessons” how much of an impact she would have on me and on my future career. 

Welcome delegates to Health & Safety Canada 2007, the IAPA's 90th annual conference and trade show!

Canadian Occupational Safety magazine is pleased to sponsor this Internet Café to help you stay connected with your colleagues while you are here learning about the latest in safety theory, and technology.

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In our latest reader panel survey, we asked COS readers about their educational and training background and what they are doing, or would like to do, to upgrade their skills as oh&s professionals. Here's what our 152 respondents had to say: