A message from Minister Ambrose to the participants at 8th Annual Alberta Health & Safety Conference and Trade Fair

Video message
for
The Honourable Rona Ambrose
Minister of Labour
For the 8th Annual Alberta Health & Safety Conference and Trade Fair
October 26, 2009
Calgary, Alberta

Check against delivery

Greetings ladies and gentlemen,

And welcome to the 8th Annual Alberta Health and Safety Conference and Trade Fair.

First let me applaud the contributions you are all making to build and sustain safe and healthy workplaces in Alberta.

Your expertise is critical to protecting hard-working Albertans from unnecessary workplace risks.

A safe workplace is a productive workplace where workers feel secure in their jobs, where innovation can flourish, and where companies can compete and succeed.

Workplace injuries exact a heavy physical, emotional and sometimes financial toll on victims and their families.

But they are bad for business too.

Losing good people to injury hurts the bottom line, undermines staff morale, and hurts recruiting efforts.

Many of these injuries should not happen.  While it is true that today’s workplaces are infinitely safer than they were in the past, there is always room for improvement.

Finding innovative ways to prevent injury and illness in the workplace is an integral part of keeping the labour force strong, healthy and competitive here in Alberta and right across Canada.

The Government of Canada, through the Labour Program, is working closely with employer and employee representatives to develop sensible and effective regulations and legislation.

Our goal is to maintain workplace safety standards in Alberta and Canada that are second to none in the world.

And to that end, we are taking action in two new areas that I would like to draw to your attention today.

Violence in the workplace

The first is violence in the workplace, a serious problem that has been overlooked for too long.

Workers deserve more and better than after-the-fact responses to workplace violence.

We must do whatever we can to prevent it from happening in the first place.

That’s why our government has made efforts to promote awareness of the problem, and worked closely with stakeholders to develop guidance materials that help prevent workplace violence.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics is another area where our government is taking action to ensure a safe, secure workplace.

Poor ergonomics can lead to a wide range of potentially debilitating musculoskeletal injuries.

So here too our government has collaborated with employers and employees to the produce educational materials that guide the development of effective musculoskeletal injury prevention programs customized to meet the unique needs of individual workplaces.

I invite you to visit the Health and Safety section of the Labour Program’s Web site to see our ergonomics publications.

H1N1 Flu virus

In closing, I want to talk to you about another important issue, an issue not only of worker health but of public health in general.

Over the past several months, we have all been getting all too well acquainted with the H1N1 flu virus.

The risk is real.  Workers and employers need to be well informed and vigilant.

Every workplace is different in terms of what needs to be done to prepare for and respond to H1N1.

But the important thing is for everyone to be prepared, to have a plan, to seek out and follow the expert advice of Canada’s public health authorities.

The Public Health Agency of Canada’s fightflu.ca portal and the Labour Program’s Web site at labour.gc.ca are excellent sources of timely and practical information.

Thanks to our government’s Economic Action Plan, Canada is poised to come out of the global recession with a stronger economy and a better fiscal situation than many of our competitors in the world.

If we continue working to improve the safety and security of Canadian workers through initiatives like our workplace violence and ergonomics programs, we will overcome these challenges and move forward into a future of unlimited possibility for our country, our Canada.

Thank you.  Please have a great conference and enjoy the trade fair.

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Date Modified:
2009-10-28