Quebec coroner calls for changes in construction industry
Quebec coroner Jean Brochu issued a report in April that sent a clear message to the province’s construction industry: It’s time for a change.
Brochu had been looking into the deaths of three men at infrastructure job sites in 2008 and 2009. The three cases all shared a similar circumstance — the men were killed while working for subcontractors on government infrastructure projects.
Brochu’s report said measures need to be enacted to make developers and public agencies more responsible for the safety of workers and wanted health and safety plans to be included in tenders when contractors bid on government work.
He called for a culture change in the way health and safety is treated on job sites.
A strong health and safety culture on job sites is a priority, said Ian Cunningham, president of the Council of Ontario Construction Associations (COCA).
“I certainly can’t disagree with that finding,” he said of the coroner’s conclusions. “That’s the goal of everybody that’s involved in health and safety in every industry, in every province.”
Whenever there is a workplace fatality, like the deaths of four workers in December 2009 who fell from scaffolding while working on an apartment building in Toronto, there is always a stronger look at safety, he said.
“I think in the wake of that scaffold accident everybody has redoubled their efforts (with safety),” he said. “Of course construction is inherently physical and somewhat hazardous employment so safety should be job one on every construction site in Ontario.”
The Toronto scaffolding tragedy prompted a review of Ontario’s OHS legislation, first with a report by professor Tony Dean and the creation of Bill 160 (which has since passed third reading), moves Cunningham said COCA supports.
“How do you create a safety culture on every construction worksite? This is a challenging issue,” he said. “Construction companies are in the main small and many of them would not know of the Dean report… but hopefully we will be able to reach them.”
The COCA is a federation of 31 construction associations representing more than 10,000 contractors and hundreds of thousands of workers, said Cunningham.
Some are outside of the orbit of the usual communications coming from health and safety, trade and construction associations, he said, adding he hopes that through the association’s communications COCA can reach out with safety messages and assist the new provincial entity created by Bill 160 with those messages.
“They’re not understanding of these changes,” he said. “Some are willfully non-compliant, that is to say they operate under the radar to avoid taking the kind of responsibility for their employees that they should, and this I should say is a very, very small number of construction employers, but this is where there’s the greatest hazard and where we have to do a good job to reach these people and encourage them to put safety number one.”
The long-term trends in construction safety have been positive and all the indicators are moving in the right direction, said Cunningham. He does acknowledge that, recently, fatalities have been up. The construction industry had eight fatalities before March 31 and only four fatalities in the same time period last year, he said.
“This is something of an aberration that we will have to address,” he said.
With the creation of a new prevention entity in Ontario and the right chief prevention officer in place, Cunningham hopes there will be a better co-ordinated prevention system in the province, he said.
From a union perspective, Vern Edwards, the director of occupational health and safety for the Ontario Federation of Labour, said he’s not sure employers are necessarily understanding their OHS responsibilities and trying to create a safety culture.
“If we’re talking generally, I think there are a lot of employers out there who just don’t get it in terms of their obligations to protect workers while they’re in the workplace,” he said.
Supervisors may not know more than the average worker about responsibilities around hazard prevention in the workplace, he said.
“They may know how to organize the work but far too often they have no clue of their obligations under the health and safety legislation as a supervisor.”
Workers are afraid to ask questions, even in unionized work environments, for fear of retribution, said Edwards.
“It really creates a culture of fear in the workplace where workers are afraid to ask questions about health and safety or to try to exercise their rights or to try to drive change in the workplace to improve health and safety,” he said.
The recent fragility in the economic climate may have contributed to a decline in the safety culture because workers are just trying to hold on to their jobs and there may be an increased level of fear about asking questions, Edwards said.
If employers are really going to take it to the next step and create a culture of safety, one of the key elements of change that is required is moving from a process of being in compliance to a process of commitment, said Elizabeth Mills, president and CEO, Workplace Safety and Prevention Services, Health and Safety Ontario.
“The first natural experience for any human being is to look around and say well it’s OK I’m learning on the job, I’ll do it like everyone else does it here,” she said, but this can cause issues, especially if there is a new piece of equipment on the job.
Construction is an industry of constantly changing job sites and workforce, but this shouldn’t be a barrier to safety, said Mills.
“Just simply because they are mobile shouldn’t be the inhibitor,” she said, adding much of the workforce isn’t static anymore.
Employers do not always need to rely on the legislature to drive health and safety, said Mills.
If employers look at successful companies that have been around for years, they will probably see strong health and safety practices in place, she said.
In order to stay in business they’ve probably done something about caring for their employees, said Mills.
Brochu had been looking into the deaths of three men at infrastructure job sites in 2008 and 2009. The three cases all shared a similar circumstance — the men were killed while working for subcontractors on government infrastructure projects.
Brochu’s report said measures need to be enacted to make developers and public agencies more responsible for the safety of workers and wanted health and safety plans to be included in tenders when contractors bid on government work.
He called for a culture change in the way health and safety is treated on job sites.
A strong health and safety culture on job sites is a priority, said Ian Cunningham, president of the Council of Ontario Construction Associations (COCA).
“I certainly can’t disagree with that finding,” he said of the coroner’s conclusions. “That’s the goal of everybody that’s involved in health and safety in every industry, in every province.”
Whenever there is a workplace fatality, like the deaths of four workers in December 2009 who fell from scaffolding while working on an apartment building in Toronto, there is always a stronger look at safety, he said.
“I think in the wake of that scaffold accident everybody has redoubled their efforts (with safety),” he said. “Of course construction is inherently physical and somewhat hazardous employment so safety should be job one on every construction site in Ontario.”
The Toronto scaffolding tragedy prompted a review of Ontario’s OHS legislation, first with a report by professor Tony Dean and the creation of Bill 160 (which has since passed third reading), moves Cunningham said COCA supports.
“How do you create a safety culture on every construction worksite? This is a challenging issue,” he said. “Construction companies are in the main small and many of them would not know of the Dean report… but hopefully we will be able to reach them.”
The COCA is a federation of 31 construction associations representing more than 10,000 contractors and hundreds of thousands of workers, said Cunningham.
Some are outside of the orbit of the usual communications coming from health and safety, trade and construction associations, he said, adding he hopes that through the association’s communications COCA can reach out with safety messages and assist the new provincial entity created by Bill 160 with those messages.
“They’re not understanding of these changes,” he said. “Some are willfully non-compliant, that is to say they operate under the radar to avoid taking the kind of responsibility for their employees that they should, and this I should say is a very, very small number of construction employers, but this is where there’s the greatest hazard and where we have to do a good job to reach these people and encourage them to put safety number one.”
The long-term trends in construction safety have been positive and all the indicators are moving in the right direction, said Cunningham. He does acknowledge that, recently, fatalities have been up. The construction industry had eight fatalities before March 31 and only four fatalities in the same time period last year, he said.
“This is something of an aberration that we will have to address,” he said.
With the creation of a new prevention entity in Ontario and the right chief prevention officer in place, Cunningham hopes there will be a better co-ordinated prevention system in the province, he said.
From a union perspective, Vern Edwards, the director of occupational health and safety for the Ontario Federation of Labour, said he’s not sure employers are necessarily understanding their OHS responsibilities and trying to create a safety culture.
“If we’re talking generally, I think there are a lot of employers out there who just don’t get it in terms of their obligations to protect workers while they’re in the workplace,” he said.
Supervisors may not know more than the average worker about responsibilities around hazard prevention in the workplace, he said.
“They may know how to organize the work but far too often they have no clue of their obligations under the health and safety legislation as a supervisor.”
Workers are afraid to ask questions, even in unionized work environments, for fear of retribution, said Edwards.
“It really creates a culture of fear in the workplace where workers are afraid to ask questions about health and safety or to try to exercise their rights or to try to drive change in the workplace to improve health and safety,” he said.
The recent fragility in the economic climate may have contributed to a decline in the safety culture because workers are just trying to hold on to their jobs and there may be an increased level of fear about asking questions, Edwards said.
If employers are really going to take it to the next step and create a culture of safety, one of the key elements of change that is required is moving from a process of being in compliance to a process of commitment, said Elizabeth Mills, president and CEO, Workplace Safety and Prevention Services, Health and Safety Ontario.
“The first natural experience for any human being is to look around and say well it’s OK I’m learning on the job, I’ll do it like everyone else does it here,” she said, but this can cause issues, especially if there is a new piece of equipment on the job.
Construction is an industry of constantly changing job sites and workforce, but this shouldn’t be a barrier to safety, said Mills.
“Just simply because they are mobile shouldn’t be the inhibitor,” she said, adding much of the workforce isn’t static anymore.
Employers do not always need to rely on the legislature to drive health and safety, said Mills.
If employers look at successful companies that have been around for years, they will probably see strong health and safety practices in place, she said.
In order to stay in business they’ve probably done something about caring for their employees, said Mills.
