The Ontario government has instituted a new Prevention Council to help protect workers and boost health and safety in workplaces.
Comprised of five labour representatives – including four union representatives – as well as four employer representatives, an occupational health and safety expert and a representative from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), the council will have three key goals.
Working under the chief prevention officer, the council will focus on finding ways to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses, developing a province-wide occupational health and safety strategy and looking into changes in the way services designed to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses are funded and delivered.
Nine of the members have been selected with decisions on one employer representative and the WSIB representative still being finalized. The nine members already selected are:
- Patrick Dillon of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario,
- Colin Grieve of the Hamilton and Ontario Professional Firefighters Associations,
- Nancy Hutchison of the Ontario Federation of Labour,
- Bryan Neath of United Food and Commercial Workers Canada,
- Graeme Norval, associate chair and undergraduate coordinator for the University of Toronto’s department of chemical engineering,
- Michael Oxley, president and CFO of DuPont Canada,
- Gloria Rajkumar, CEO of Superior Independent Medical Assessment Centres,
- Roy Slack, president of Cementation Canada Inc.,
- Linda Vannucci, director of the Toronto Workers’ Health and Safety Legal Clinic
“This accomplished, dynamic group – selected from labour, employer and academic backgrounds — will work with the chief prevention officer to help improve workplace health and safety throughout Ontario. Our ultimate and shared goal is to eliminate work-related injury and illness,” said Ontario Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey.
The Minister will be responsible for setting a date by which the council must select a chair.
“I am looking forward to working closely with these prevention leaders to develop and implement a provincewide occupational health and safety strategy that will lead ultimately to safer workplaces for all workers in Ontario,” said chief prevention officer George Gritziotis.
The new Prevention Council marks another step in the Ontario government’s goal of ensuring workplaces are as safe as possible. In 2008, the province launched its Safe at Work campaign, which has seen more than 400 health and safety inspectors sent to examine workplaces in order to ensure proper health and safety measures and procedures were being followed.
Since the program’s inception, Safe at Work inspectors have conducted more than 226,000 field visits and 25 proactive inspection blitzes and issued more than 360,000 compliance orders.
