Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
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Labour

www.labour.gc.ca

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Making Workplaces Safer

Creating a Culture of Health and Safety

Workplace health and safety is a responsibility that involves everyone: employers, workers, unions and governments.

The role of the Labour Program in creating and maintaining safe and healthy workplaces is to:

  • inform employers of their duty regarding health and safety in the workplace, such as ensuring that workers have the necessary information, training and supervision to perform their jobs safely;
  • ensure that worker complaints, including refusals to work, and accidents and injuries are properly reported and investigated; and
  • inform workers of their rights and responsibilities, including their right to know about foreseeable workplace hazards, their right to participate in efforts to make workplaces safer, and their right to refuse dangerous work.

The Legislation

The Labour Program promotes a fair, safe, and productive work environment, which contributes to the social and economic well-being of all Canadians. One of its major responsibilities is the administration of the Canada Labour Code. Part II of the Code deals with occupational health and safety. The goal of this legislation is to prevent accidents and injuries in federal public service workplaces and private sector workplaces under federal jurisdiction. This includes some of Canada’s major infrastructure sectors, such as interprovincial and international transportation (air, rail, ports and trucking), communications, banking and Crown corporations.

Workplace Health and Safety Committees

Under the Canada Labour Code, employers are required to establish a health and safety committee for each workplace that has 20 or more workers.The role of health and safety committees includes:

  • identifying hazards and obtaining information about them;
  • assisting in resolving cases of work refusal;
  • participating in accident investigations and workplace inspections; and
  • making recommendations to management regarding actions required to resolve health and safety concerns.

What We Do

The Labour Program fulfills its health and safety role by:

  • developing directives to ensure consistent interpretation of the Canada Labour Code;
  • educating and training employers and workers;
  • inspecting workplaces;
  • investigating accidents; and
  • analysing the injury data that employers are legally required to submit annually.

Occupational health and safety officers in the field are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across the country, to investigate serious accidents and fatalities and to respond to cases where workers refuse to work because they deem it dangerous.

Nobody knows a workplace better than the people who work in it. Employers and workers both play a role in the identification and resolution of health and safety concerns, and, in so doing, make their workplace safer.

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Date Modified:
2011-09-23