Workplace safety laws get sharper teeth

New legislation gives workplace safety inspectors the power to hand out fines for safety violations (James Whitehead)

James Whitehead

jm545598@dal.ca

Wearing a hard-hat backwards on the job could cost you $100 or more in Nova Scotia.  As of today, fines will be issued for this and other workplace safety violations under new provincial regulation.

Vince Garnier, director of the Department of Labour and Workforce Development, says the new legislation is designed to help keep workers safe on the job.
“Any injury is too many injuries in the work place,” he said. “This is just another tool to help us seek compliance with the legislation.”

Last year, 31 people died on the job in Nova Scotia. According to the province’s Workers Compensation Board, one in 10 people are injured at work in Nova Scotia. But Garnier says the high number of deaths last year was not the determining factor in bringing forward this legislation.

When inspectors see a safety violation, they write up an order for it to be fixed. Before today, there was no way to enforce those orders. The new legislation gives the Occupational Health and Safety Act a new set of teeth by adding fines for safety infractions.

The fines ranging from $100 for an employee to $500 for the employer and $250 for the supervisor will not be handed out on the spot. Instead, they will be mailed out after an administrator determines the appropriate amount. The fines will increase if there is an injury or a
history of infractions.

Similar to a parking ticket, a fine can be appealed within 21 days.

Sean Leggett, safety manager for Dexter Construction, thinks the legislation will force the hand of companies that take safety shortcuts.

“If we’re having the same amount of deaths every year I think it’s probably time for an improvement,” he said.

Leggett hopes the fines will help level the safety playing field.
He says that, generally, larger companies have more extensive safety programs. While safety violations may not be as much of an issue for his company, sometimes Dexter works on sites with other companies that aren’t as safety conscious, a situation that he feels puts Dexter employees in danger.

“We aren’t expecting a two-man operation to have the same kind of safety program as us, but they should be held to the same standard.”

But not everyone likes the new legislation. Carol MacCulloch, of the Construction Association of Nova Scotia, says there are some concerns with the new regulations, especially with the inspection system.

“Where the inspectors go is not very evenly distributed,” she said, “so certain sites are inspected a lot because they are high profile, not necessarily because there is a health and safety risk there.”

But Garnier says that worksites with previous infractions and those that are high risk will be inspected more often. The Department of Labour is also obligated to respond to complaints about safety violations. Garnier says dealing with those takes up a lot of their safety inspectors’ time.

MacCulloch says part of the problem is that the Occupational Health and Safety Act is vague and complicated. And too much is left up to the safety inspectors’ interpretation of the regulations.

“There’s always something that potentially somebody could flag as being non-compliant, no matter how hard you try,” she said.

For MacCulloch, the answer is much less heavy-handed. She thinks fines are unfair and excessive. She would rather see more safety training and education, something she thinks is lacking in Nova Scotia.

“I consider safety a skill and it’s something you have to be
continuously refreshing and renewing,” she said. “It’s not people not being in compliance, it’s people not being able to recognize when they’re at risk.”

But Garnier says Nova Scotia isn’t the only jurisdiction to have penalties for safety infractions. British Columbia, the Yukon, Manitoba and New Brunswick all have variations of this form of regulation enforcement.

“We did a lot of research into what they had and then made sure we introduced something that was applicable for Nova Scotia,” he said.