1996 ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
CONTENTS
Thursday 24 April 1997
1996 annual report, Provincial Auditor: Section 3.16, occupational health and safety program
Ministry of Labour
Mr Tim Millard, Deputy Minister
Mr Paavo Kivisto, assistant Deputy Minister, operations division
STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
Chair / Président: Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East /-Est L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre /-Centre L)
Mr Marcel Beaubien (Lambton PC)
Mr Dave Boushy (Sarnia PC)
Mr Gary Carr (Oakville South / -Sud PC)
Mrs Brenda Elliott (Guelph PC)
Mr Gary Fox (Prince Edward-Lennox-South Hastings / Prince Edward-Lennox-Hastings-Sud PC)
Mr Bernard Grandmaître (Ottawa East /-Est L)
Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC)
Mr Jean-Marc Lalonde (Prescott and Russell / Prescott et Russell L)
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East / -Est ND)
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre /-Centre L)
Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon / Lac-Nipigon ND)
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich L)
Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea PC)
Mr Toni Skarica (Wentworth North / -Nord PC)
Substitutions /Membres remplaçants:
Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford PC)
Mr Terence Young (Halton Centre / -Centre PC)
Also taking part /Autre participant:
Mr Erik Peters, Provincial Auditor
Clerk / Greffière: Ms Donna Bryce
Staff / Personnel: Mr Steve Poelking, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1038 in room 228, following a closed session.
1996 ANNUAL REPORT, PROVINCIAL AUDITOR
Consideration of section 3.16, occupational health and safety program.
The Chair (Mr Bernard Grandmaître:) Good morning. We are now into our open session. With us this morning are three witnesses, possibly four witnesses: the deputy minister, the ADM and also the director of the occupational health and safety branch.
MINISTRY OF LABOUR
The Chair: Deputy Minister, maybe you should start, and possibly introduce your colleagues. Good morning.
Mr Tim Millard: Thank you, Mr Chair. My name is Tim Millard, the Deputy Minister of Labour. On my right is the assistant deputy minister of the operations division, Paavo Kivisto, and on my left, Dr Ed McCloskey, the director of the occupational health and safety branch. Shall I commence with some opening remarks?
The Chair: By all means.
Mr Millard: First, let me thank you for the opportunity to be here and for inviting us to bring you up to date on the ministry's progress regarding the Provincial Auditor's recommendations to improve our occupational health and safety program.
I think, as you know, our ultimate goal in the Ministry of Labour is a coordinated health and safety system where the ministry, its agencies, and the employers and employees of Ontario all work together to create among the safest workplaces in the world.
Even before our auditor made his recommendations, the ministry determined to end duplication of services, waste and inefficiencies that unfortunately had grown up over the years in the occupational health and safety system.
Interjections.
The Chair: Sorry, if you want another meeting, I would ask you to keep your voice down. Sorry, Deputy Minister.
Mr Millard: Thank you, Mr Chair. We made the decision to integrate the responsibilities of the Workplace Health and Safety Agency into the Workers' Compensation Board. Bill 15, which received royal assent in December 1995, marked the first stage of Workers' Compensation Board reform.
Bill 99, which awaits second reading, proposes the final transfer of all of the appropriate Workplace Health and Safety Agency activities to the Workers' Compensation Board, consistent with a strong new mandate for the prevention of workplace accidents and illness.
Last March, acting on the recommendations of the review panel report on workplace health and safety, the ministry initiated stage one of reform of the entire workplace health and safety system. The internal responsibility system will remain the foundation of Ontario's approach to workplace health and safety. It makes employers and employees ultimately responsible for eliminating hazards in their workplaces and for ensuring they are healthy and safe.
Stage one set down five strategic areas for reform. The first was to identify priorities and goals for health and safety, with a focus on prevention through improved performance, evaluation and measurement. The ministry is working with the Workplace Health and Safety Agency, the Workers' Compensation Board and the safe workplace associations to develop a comprehensive injury prevention strategy. An inter-agency working group has developed performance measures to evaluate the effectiveness of our program initiatives and activities. The performance measures include statistics on the incidence of occupational injuries, the costs of these accidents and the level of self-reliance in the workplace.
The second phase was to expand the WCB's mandate to make prevention of illness and injury and the promotion of health and safety an integral part of its activities. This new mandate will be formalized in legislation once Bill 99 is passed.
The third was to restructure and streamline the safe workplace associations so their services are focused on the needs of the sectors they represent. This process is now under way.
The fourth was to develop new province-wide standards and approve training programs and training providers that meet these standards. The Workplace Health and Safety Agency has developed a new approach to certification training that recognizes that members of joint health and safety committees must have the knowledge and skills necessary to carry out their responsibilities. It has also finalized new training standards for certified committee members. The standards allow for greater flexibility in how training programs can be delivered, using classrooms, videos, workbooks, CD-ROMs, computer-based training and other methods.
And finally, a commitment to increase investment in occupational health and safety research. To this end, we are working to create new partnerships with universities, research organizations and the private sector.
Since the launch of the first stage of reform, the ministry has published its business plan, which defines the ministry's new role as setting, communicating and enforcing workplace standards. This complements the Workers' Compensation Board's ultimate role of prevention and promotion. Again, it is emphasized that the workplace parties are expected to become more self-reliant in achieving those standards in order to eliminate hazards.
Most recently, the Ministry of Labour set the wheels in motion for the next major phase of reform. A discussion paper was released that seeks public input on how to update the Occupational Health and Safety Act so it will be relevant into the 21st century. Among the themes outlined in the discussion paper are:
Enhancing the prevention of injury and illness in the workplace;
Meeting the needs of today's changing workplaces by encouraging best practices and allowing greater flexibility for workplace parties to achieve health and safety objectives;
Eliminating confusion over how to interpret the roles, responsibilities and rights of workplace parties by clearly defining and enshrining the principles of the internal responsibility system in the Occupational Health and Safety Act;
Strengthening the effectiveness of joint health and safety committees by making them more reflective of the needs of the individual workplaces;
Clarifying the right to refuse unsafe work to ensure that it's used effectively to rectify unsafe workplace practices and conditions;
Eliminating red tape and any overlap or duplication with other legislation; and finally,
Achieving the progressive reduction of injury and illness in Ontario's workplaces.
It's an ambitious agenda, one that goes a long way towards implementing the recommendations made in the Provincial Auditor's report on occupational health and safety.
The Auditor's first recommendation concerned measuring and reporting on effectiveness. It suggested the ministry develop an overall framework to more clearly define roles and responsibilities, set priorities and coordinate program delivery and evaluation. It also called for the establishment of mechanisms to identify and eliminate duplication of service wherever practical.
As I have pointed out, much of this has already been accomplished. The roles and responsibilities of the ministry, the Workers' Compensation Board and key health and safety agencies have been clearly defined and priorities have been set. Steps have or are being taken to identify and eliminate duplication of service and to coordinate program delivery and refine strategies for evaluation.
Workers' Compensation Board data on injuries and the costs incurred are now available online for most ministry field staff, with province-wide access expected by the end of June. The data is being used by ministry inspectors to target workplaces with a high rate of serious injuries.
The auditor's second recommendation concerned administering and enforcing the Occupational Health and Safety Act and its regulations. It was recommended that the ministry devise a priority-setting process for ranking significant health and safety hazards, and procedures for monitoring the progress of regulation development and amendment and for taking timely corrective action.
Accordingly, the ministry has developed a priority-setting process for ranking significant occupational health and safety hazards. The process includes a mechanism to identify and evaluate hazards and a mechanism to assign them into groups and give them a priority ranking for ministry action, including the development of regulations and standards, where needed.
The ministry has also implemented a streamlined process for developing regulations which incorporates the priority-setting process, includes specific management procedures to ensure accountability and timeliness in the development of specific regulations and associated standards, and allows for consultation with stakeholders within a set time frame. These new processes will also be used for the development of codes of practice and guidelines.
The auditor's third recommendation concerned enforcement, specifically with the development of alternatives for dealing with work refusals. As I've already noted, the discussion paper on the review of the Occupational Health and Safety Act makes it clear that the government is committed to retaining the worker's right to refuse unsafe work. However, the discussion paper also seeks public input on how the right to refuse can best be used to make workplaces safer.
The paper asks what changes, if any, are needed to make the right-to-refuse provisions easier to understand and apply, ensure the right to refuse plays an effective role in the internal responsibility system, and ensure the right to refuse is used responsibly by the workplace parties.
The auditor's fourth recommendation concerned setting priorities for workplace inspections and suggests the ministry should develop procedures and criteria for identifying high-risk workplaces and targeting workplace inspections, and make more extensive use of workplace information from the Workers' Compensation Board and other health and safety organizations.
The ministry, in response, has developed criteria for dealing with poor workplace health and safety performers. Using its own records of accidents and health and safety complaints and computer access to Workers' Compensation Board data on injuries and ratings, the ministry will be better able to identify and target high-risk workplaces and businesses with poor health and safety records. Analysis of the variety of information available will help this ministry to target problems within sectors and develop a plan of action for the inspectors in each district office to work with business to solve the problems.
For example, in the industrial health and safety program, information on 16 sectors sets out field delivery strategies, key issues and concerns, major and new hazards and statistical data, along with other parameters that field staff can use in planning their work.
The Workers' Compensation Board will also have a role to play through its new mandate of preventing workplace injuries and illness and promoting health and safety. Of course, the emphasis will be on the workplace parties taking responsibility for ensuring that their workplaces are safe and hazard-free.
The auditor's fifth recommendation concerned the handling of outstanding orders. The ministry is asked to ensure that appropriate corrective action has been taken on identified health and safety hazards and violations. The auditor suggests that a system should be established for rating orders according to the seriousness of infractions and for monitoring progress on compliance. Serious outstanding orders should be promptly followed up on.
The ministry does not issue orders lightly and expects all orders to be complied with as quickly as possible. We have cut the number of outstanding orders by more than half and will continue to keep them at a minimum.
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Quality assurance plans have been set for the industrial, construction and mining programs that are designed to ensure that health and safety inspectors follow through on investigations. The plans include monitoring outstanding orders and ensuring they are complied with promptly. To help implement the quality assurance plans, seven regional program adviser positions have been created.
The auditor's sixth recommendation was that the ministry establish appropriate procedures for managing field visits in order to improve the quality of inspections and ensure better use of inspection resources.
The ministry has already undertaken to ensure that field staff target high-risk workplaces. Health and safety inspections increased by 46% in this last fiscal year.
The development of work plans for field visits, including the setting of targets on a provincial and regional basis, is well under way. The regional program advisers will work with health and safety managers and their field staff to develop individual work plans that include targets for each inspector.
Finally, the auditor recommended the ministry ensure that annual performance reviews for inspection staff are done on a timely basis. This will make it easier to identify and act on the training needs of new and existing staff. The result should be a well-trained staff that can deliver consistently high-quality services.
An operations division training plan is produced annually. This plan establishes curriculum and training priorities for health and safety inspectors. All field staff now have training plans included as a part of their performance agreements and a list of required courses has been prepared, based on the training needs identified in their agreements or contracts. Twenty new health and safety inspectors are now in the process of being trained, using the courses that grew out of this process.
The final touches are also being put on setting down the core competencies necessary for health and safety inspectors to implement the ministry's revised mandate of setting, communicating and enforcing standards. Based on these core competencies, the health and safety program will design and deliver the necessary courses for its field staff.
Discussions are under way with the Construction Safety Association of Ontario and the Industrial Accident Prevention Association regarding course delivery to construction and industrial health and safety inspectors. These courses should be ready for delivery in this fiscal year.
As you can see, much work has already been done to implement the auditor's recommendations, and the ministry is coming to completing the task.
I welcome any questions about the ministry's progress on the auditor's recommendations, Mr Chair.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Millard. Mr Hastings.
Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): Thank you, Mr Millard, for coming today and presenting your views on where the ministry is responding to some of the issues raised by the auditor.
My primary concern relates to the state of training in the inspections branch. I'm curious as to the auditor's point that 50% of the mandatory training component was out of date as of -- I don't know when. If that's actually the situation, how many people does it affect? If inspectors had been there, let's say, 10, 12, 15 years, would not their core competencies have been drastically affected in the delivery of inspection service if they hadn't been able to continue their mandatory training? In other words, I guess the whole issue here is, who is running the ship in that branch and did it not affect pay performance consequently right down the line?
Mr Millard: I'll attempt to answer that, and if my colleague Mr Kivisto feels the need to jump, I'm sure he will want to do so.
First of all, let me explain that it's my belief that we have a highly committed workforce of health and safety inspectors. Any training deficiencies were not the fault of the inspectors. I think inspectors gain their ability to do the job through the combination of experience, training and the academic education with which they come into the job.
Our inspectors are not on a performance pay basis and so I will deal with that up front. Pay for performance, as you perhaps know, in the Ontario public service, is limited to senior management and is not a feature of the inspectors' pay, but performance agreements are now in place for every inspector and there is a training and development plan in place for every inspector that indicates the kind of training and development they need to meet the agreed-upon standard in their performance agreement.
There had been a lag in the development of training and in the delivery of training; there can be no question about that. Inspectors recently have brought that to our attention. Over the last year and a half it's been brought to my attention since I became deputy minister. There has been a response to it, a meaningful response, but I just want to be clear that I see it not as the responsibility of the health and safety inspectors. We, as management, must create an environment within which they have the opportunity to learn and provide the tools for them to learn. We're committed to doing that and we are doing it.
I think the fact that Paavo, for the entire operations division now, both in occupational health and safety and in employment standards, has in place individual training and development plans. Individual performance agreements for every field staff is exactly what needs to be done in that regard to respond to your issue about the lack of currency in the inspectors' ability to cope with what are major changes in the workplaces.
Mr Hastings: How did it come to be that there was such a lack of anticipatory action by whoever was running that inspections branch in terms of the senior management? Surely somebody must have recognized back two or three years ago that there was a problem, before even you arrived.
Mr Millard: Paavo.
Mr Paavo Kivisto: Perhaps I could respond. The training curriculum that was in use by the occupational health and safety managers and staff had been developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s and it included quite a wide-sweeping range of courses. Most of the critical ones that involved the job of addressing inspections and appliance were in place, but there were some parts of that curriculum that had not yet been developed in terms of the priorities established almost 10 years ago.
Back around 1992-93, in that range, the operations division identified through its inspectors the need to really beef up our investigation enforcement training. We put a lot of energy involving staff and managers into developing a series of modules that would help us do that part of our job better. There was, if I remember right, a task force of close to 25 field staff with management that addressed that. We put on a series of training programs that took us almost a year to develop and deliver. That has been delivered in a structure that is available now to all field staff.
Training in the ministry 10 years ago was largely a centralized affair. Staff were expected to come to a central area to receive their training. We realized that doesn't work any more. You can't bring people from around the province, as you hire them and as they leave, one at a time, to do training effectively with that kind of classroom instruction. We developed a series of modules and coaches who can deliver that training remotely from centre. So from about the mid-1990s through the current time, the approach has been quite different in terms of the way we deliver our training when training is required.
The more recent exercise of working to core competencies I think will also help refine what we think are critical skills and information that inspectors need to do the job well and will help us focus to make sure that's available as required and more flexible in terms of delivery.
The Chair: Mr Hardeman. Every caucus will be given 10 minutes.
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Mr Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): Thank you for the presentation. A very quick question first. Locally it's been expressed to me that the ministry is cutting down the length of time we spend training people, not necessarily ministry inspectors but the people who are involved in the health and safety committees in the workplace. It used to be a weeks-long program and then it went down to a week and now it's down to three or four days. Is that an accurate assessment of how we are training the safety inspectors, both the ministry ones and the local ones?
Mr Millard: If I may, Mr Hardeman, I think the training to which you refer is the training for joint health and safety committee members in the workplace. The Workplace Health and Safety Agency has developed a new set of standards, both for certification training -- certification training is directed towards employer members and employee members on the joint health and safety committees. The Workplace Health and Safety Agency developed a new set of guidelines, new certification standards for both the content of training and for the deliverers of training, but as I said in my presentation, they are designed to be more flexible to allow for appropriate combinations of classroom, workplace-based and even sometimes home-based training with all of the new adult learning techniques available to them. These are adults and we must have adult learning tools available for them.
Until 1995, the Workplace Health and Safety Agency unfortunately had not been able to develop a consensus around appropriate training for the service establishment and so very little, if any, training had taken place for joint health and safety committee members in the service establishment. As the result of the new standards to have appropriate training with the appropriate flexibility and guidelines available, it's my understanding that we now have more than 8,000 people enrolled or taking training in the service business. The service business is not hazard-free, as we all know.
That is what it was intended to do, and I believe that's where it's succeeding. It's making training more generally available. It is not as prescriptive as previous training requirements were; it is more performance-based. There is argument and there is of course controversy around whether learning should be prescriptive or whether there should be a performance standard associated with it and allow the appropriate techniques to be used to achieve those appropriate performance standards. But the bottom line in the service establishment, in other areas, is that more training is taking place, and I'm confident it will be appropriate training.
Mr Hardeman: The other item, if I could, Mr Chair, just very quickly: Could you outline for me how a process that would set priorities as to which areas should be looked at, as opposed to others, as it relates to safety? Is one accident waiting to happen worse than another accident waiting to happen?
Mr Millard: Since both Paavo Kivisto and Ed McCloskey are far more involved on a day-to-day basis, I'll ask Paavo.
Mr Kivisto: The question about how we set priorities in terms of hazards in workplaces and where we put resources, be it resources on the training side or be it resources on injury prevention or promotion or enforcement, it's done on a basis of two sets of numbers. One is injury experience looking backwards and saying in effect that if something isn't done to intervene in terms of that trend, we need to do something about it. You need to look at the nature of the injuries, some of them causing worker death, others serious injury that requires long absences from work. From the ministry's perspective, we're focusing on those.
There are other kinds of injuries that are related to musculoskeletal injuries, repetitive strain injuries, that are more properly the priority of the safety associations and other groups that are into prevention promotion. What we are working on together with the Workers' Compensation Board, the Ministry of Labour and the safe workplace association is an injury prevention strategy. We have a draft document that we prepared and have shared with those two other organizations that's being finalized and that will help set out who's going to do what and what priorities we're going to have as individual organizations so that we fit together from the prevention promotion side right through to enforcement, and eventually with the compensation side, dealing with rehabilitation, return to work and insurance.
That document, I think, and the discussions around it have been very helpful in terms of each of us understanding where our resources would have the biggest impact on injury prevention, and we're looking at the strengths that we all bring.
Mr Richard Patten (Ottawa Centre): I'd like to try and get an overview context, if you don't mind, on a few things. You have responded, and the auditor said that in fact the ministry responded, quite positively to every recommendation that was there in terms of some activity. These things have implications of course for the next phase. You address this in your presentation in the coordinated role and the role for the WCB and the new sets of responsibilities for the parties in the workplace, the employers, the employees, their committees and all that kind of thing.
Having said that, my information suggests that the response to the auditor was last year, in writing, and you've elaborated somewhat on this. However, when I look at the 1996-97 budget, I note that the ministry has lost 24.5%, or $38 million, and almost 41% of your staff, which is 751 employees. I have to conclude either there was tremendous waste before, and now you've got fewer employees but they're all at least twice as efficient and will address the future with great optimism, or that you've had to redefine and there has been some redefinition of roles, as I see it.
I know the government is certainly anxious to pass on responsibilities, other than with what the government has. It may be hard for you or may be too political a question, but it seems to me if I were running a ministry and had just lost 41% of my staff, I would be getting pretty desperate. These observations by the auditor were made prior to the cuts and yet you've been able to respond positively to them. Could you describe to me the challenges that you face? Of course, my information may not be correct, but if it is correct, how do you respond to those challenges?
Mr Millard: It is always challenging. First, let me say that the Ministry of Labour is responsible for a broad range of services. Occupational health and safety is one of them. Employment standards is another. Labour management services, labour relations, conciliation, mediation, arbitrations: Those all make up the program components and the budget of the ministry.
What do we do first? We set priorities. In meeting the challenge that I think every organization in the 1990s is facing, and we're not unique in that regard, we set priorities: What do we do best? What we take into account is, what is the public's most significant set of needs from us? How can we best respond to those needs of the public? Then let's look at the priorities that we must place upon our own programs, on our own expenditures, and let's see whether we can't have others who have an important role to play in the provision of services to the public, who can do some things as well as, or better than, us or if we are duplicating, if we are overlapping. We set our core businesses.
I will give you an overview. In the Ministry of Labour we have reduced our administration expenditures by 50% in two years. I think that is where one should start. We've engaged other ministries of the crown to provide services for us that we used to try to provide for ourselves.
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Mr Patten: What proportion of the budget would that represent, Mr Millard, 50% of administrative costs?
Mr Millard: I don't think I have that immediately before me. I didn't anticipate that question, but none the less they are substantial expenditures and they will be in the estimates and in the business plan. But we engaged others from the crown, other ministries, to provide at least six different services that we used to try to provide ourselves, and they're doing it in a more cost-effective manner.
We had to make tough decisions around the provision of things such as grievance mediation services. We came to the determination that the outcome of a grievance mediation -- where there is a collective agreement, there is a process in place for being able to resolve that grievance.
Is that as large a public good as it is a private good? Therefore, should that service be provided privately? That is one of the decisions we made. We decided that grievance mediation -- non-mediation and conciliation, which we think really does have a large impact on the public good, but grievance mediation less so, so we made that kind of decision.
Within occupational health and safety, we wanted to go directly to occupational health and safety. We have committed ourselves to retaining the number of health and safety inspectors. We have not reduced the number of health and safety inspectors. We think that's by far the thing that the public expects most of us, to have someone there to be able to enforce the law. I hasten to add that when we talk about self-reliance we are not talking about self-enforcement. The government of Ontario, the Ministry of Labour, still enforces the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
We retained the number of inspectors, but we had to engage in other ways to have service provided. We have privatized a laboratory. We now have the services provided to the employer at employer cost, most often by a private laboratory. It is a cost of doing business. Those are the kinds of decisions we've made in order to effect the kind of change that was necessary, in our view, in our ministry -- and yet I believe, and I firmly believe, Mr Patten, protected the public interest. That's the kind of decision-making process and the kind of management deliberations that we engaged in.
Mr Patten: Actually, I'm pleased to hear that. If you have to make those hard decisions, I would hope the health and safety side would be perhaps the highest consideration.
Some of the labs that were closed -- how many were replaced or how many just had to be dropped? We know the ministry had to drop some labs. How many were picked up by a private research firm or by a private company?
Mr Millard: I know that our occupational health lab services were contracted and that lab is now being operated by Novamann laboratories. Paavo or Ed, can you speak to the others, the status at the present time?
Mr Kivisto: I can do it and Ed can fill in. There were four labs that the operations division ran, the occupational health lab being one, that Tim just spoke to. There are three others: the radiation protection lab that is used to analyse radiation-related samples from the workplace, but also from the environment. We are in negotiations with the federal government in terms of them providing that service to the province of Ontario in terms of the lab itself.
Mr Patten: Is that the one where it had the chest X-rays for a lot of workers that was backlogged, or is that another lab?
Mr Kivisto: No. I'll speak to that at the end. Another lab was the chest clinic itself that you're referring to, where we took chest X-rays and pulmonary function tests of workers. That service is available through various hospitals and medical clinics, but the most important part of that service was the reading of the X-rays and the pulmonary function tests and the storage of that information for medical studies. That responsibility has been transferred to the WCB and it is in fact carrying that out.
The fourth lab is the materials testing lab, which is in Sudbury, for testing mine wire ropes. We are into negotiations with Laurentian University and the Sudbury Business Development Corp to see if there's some way of having someone else operate that particular lab as part of the big centre, and those things are yet very preliminary in terms of discussions. We haven't got a conclusion on that. Notwithstanding that, we have committed to continuing the materials testing lab portion as long as necessary until we find someone else who can provide that service to workers in the industry.
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): Thank you, to the three of you, for appearing here this morning. The auditor used information that was based on the 1995-96 fiscal year, and I'm wondering if you have information with respect to field visits to workplaces, inspections, investigations for the 1996-97 fiscal year.
Interjection.
Ms Martel: All right. I'd like to base my questions on the 1996-97 fiscal year, if I might. Can you tell the committee how many field visits to workplaces occurred in the last fiscal year?
Mr Kivisto: The reason I'm hesitating is only because we sometimes report things on a calendar year and sometimes on a fiscal year and I've got statistics on both. In the fiscal year 1996-97, we have carried out 48,800 inspections, 12,500 investigations and 2,800 consultations, which is 58,100 field visits.
Ms Martel: Can you explain to me the difference between the inspections, the investigations and the consultations, because in the numbers you just gave us, around the inspections in particular, there was a significant difference in numbers, and maybe there's a reason for that I don't understand. Can you give me actually the definitions, because the auditor's numbers were a little bit different. There have been some changes, some positive ones certainly, on the field visits side, but the others I'm not quite sure if they were all changed upwards.
Mr Kivisto: I can explain the difference. I don't understand what numbers you're looking at.
Ms Martel: We've got the Provincial Auditor's audit, so I'm using his numbers from the fiscal year just to make the comparison. Certainly there's been an increase, then, on the field visits, for example, to workplaces, because there were 42,000 in 1995-96. You just told me there were 48,800 in the last fiscal year.
There was a breakdown, then, of inspections, investigations and consultations?
Mr Kivisto: Yes.
Ms Martel: I'd like to know what the differences are between inspections, investigations and consultations.
Mr Kivisto: The field visits consist of all of our trips into the workplace, and we have several kinds of activities when we go to a workplace. An investigation is triggered by either a workplace accident of some type or a complaint or a work refusal which is made to the ministry and requires a response from us into the workplace. We'll go out and investigate and render our decisions and conclusions as required. Consultations are requests by the workplace for us to go and give them some information. These are field visits; these aren't done in the office. Somebody gets in a vehicle or whatever and travels to the workplace. Inspections are planned inspections that the ministry carries out. What we have is a planning process whereby we target how many days an inspector has available to do inspections and we target workplaces for inspections based on their compliance record and their accident record.
As I said earlier, in 1996-97, the number of field visits overall increased substantially, as did inspections. The reason that happened was not because there was an increase in the number of inspectors, but we gave clear direction to our staff that their job is to be interacting face to face with the client, and all of the other work that they did that we could divert to a field presence, we would do so. So the administrative duties they were doing in the office, filling in reports, anything we could do to streamline their work was done. As well, by targeting the inspections to high-risk workplaces, many of them being smaller workplaces, we were able to increase substantially the number of field visits our officers made.
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Ms Martel: How many orders were issued?
Mr Kivisto: Last year the number of orders was 54,000.
Ms Martel: How many of those led to a prosecution?
Mr Kivisto: I don't have how many prosecutions were initiated last year offhand, but I'll look it up for you. Prosecutions by the ministry are governed by our prosecution policy. We have a series of criteria that we expect our staff to follow in terms of considering prosecution. They are things such as non-compliance with an order. Every time there's a workplace death or a critical injury, we consider whether there should be a prosecution. In other words, if there has been a contravention of a regulation that caused a workplace death or critical injury, there will be a consideration for prosecution. It doesn't mean we always prosecute, because sometimes there hasn't been a regulation contravened and sometimes we can't prove it to the satisfaction of the courts. If there's obstruction of an inspector in the carrying out of his duties, if there are flagrant violations that could have serious consequences, we consider prosecution. We typically prosecute between 300 and 500 times a year, but that varies from year to year depending on circumstances.
Ms Martel: Can you give me an estimate of what the breakdown would be between prosecutions of employers and prosecutions of workers?
Mr Kivisto: I can't give it to you today, but I can certainly provide that for you.
Ms Martel: Can you give the committee any sense as to the increase from the auditor's year of doing the audit, 1995-96, where we had 35,000 orders, to last year, where you said we had 54,000? That's a pretty significant increase in a single fiscal year. Do you have any idea of what's happening?
Mr Kivisto: One of the things, if you look at the number of inspections carried out the year the audit was done, you'll find that typically we were averaging about an order per inspection. That ratio has gone up a bit. There's a bit more than an order per inspection now.
A good example might be what we did with the forklift initiative last year. We identified, through some statistical analysis, that there had been 21 workers killed around forklifts over a five-year period, six in one year. We worked with the WCB and the safety associations to devise a forklift initiative where the ministry would target any workplace where we believed there was a forklift operating. In eastern Ontario, for example, where this thing really took off, the ministry did 2,600 inspections of workplaces that had forklifts, resulting in 6,000 orders. You can see the ratio there is almost three orders per inspection, a really good, effective use of targeted inspections that had a big impact on workplaces.
The fact that we worked with the safety associations and the WCB allowed them to be ready for clients who would be calling for help, because as we went out and found out that there were contraventions and lack of training perhaps of workers, we were able to refer them to the appropriate organization for support. These organizations have seen a major increase in requests for training around forklift operation. By working in concert with each other on an initiative like that, we've increased the number of orders per inspection, had a major impact on workplaces and have also complemented and supported workplaces by having training materials available through the safety associations.
Ms Martel: How many of your inspections would have been planned and the employer notified in advance, and how many would have been inspections where the inspector showed up unannounced and without having that prearranged?
Mr Kivisto: All inspections are planned. We don't carry out any inspections that are not planned. Unplanned work is investigations where we get a phone call and we have to respond, and we drop our plans for an inspection the next day or two, whatever, and do the investigation.
In terms of prior notice of inspections, the only time that is done is where there has been an arrangement made at the request of the workplace parties, the workers and the employer both jointly agreeing that they want prior notice so they can organize their people to be present for the inspection. There are very few such agreements, but they are in place.
When a request is submitted for prior notice, we look to make sure that both sides, the employer and the employees, agree, and if there's a union, the union agrees. We look at their compliance record, we look at their accident record and we either agree to do it or not, always reserving the right to do an unannounced inspection if we so choose.
Ms Martel: What I'm getting at is this: I suspect the vast majority of workplaces in the province don't have joint health and safety committees. Perhaps you can give the committee that number too. I'm wondering how some of those inspections, then, would be triggered. What do you do in the case where you get a call from a non-unionized worker who says, "I'm really concerned about what's happening on this site; I would like to exercise my right to refuse, and I think I should because of this site"? What does your inspector do when the ministry gets a call like that?
Mr Kivisto: We do two things when we get a phone call from a worker about a work refusal. We'll first determine from that worker whether they've made an effort to have that thing investigated internally by the employer and supervisor, as they're required to do under legislation. If they've followed the right process to try to resolve it internally and there is a refusal requiring a ministry investigation, we'll go investigate. A work refusal is a very specific request for ministry intervention.
Ms Martel: In that case, does the inspector call the employer first or does the inspector just make a determination that the worker has made every effort to exercise his responsibility and so it's up to the inspector to go? Is there notification to the employer in that case?
Mr Kivisto: I would expect the inspector to talk to the worker and find out what they've done to try to resolve the issue. In some cases, the workers don't know that they should report it to a supervisor and they should have a supervisor look at it. If the two of them agree that something is wrong and it gets fixed, we don't hear back.
We'll say to the worker: "Who have you talked to? Have you made an effort to bring it to the attention of your supervisor? What did they do?" If the end result of that is, yes, it was reported to the supervisor and they can't agree, then the inspector will make a visit to the workplace and, through that visit, investigate that particular circumstance and make a determination as to whether or not that work is likely to endanger or not likely to endanger workers.
The Chair: Thank you. I must move on. The Progressive Conservative Party, any questions?
Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): Let me just very quickly ask a couple of questions, as I want to get to two essential points, but preface my questions by thanking the deputy minister. I think particularly your response to Mr Patten was very forthright, very responsible, and I think it reflected a healthy and commonsense approach to the way in fact we are trying to get our priorities straight in government.
I want to ask you to go to a couple of points. Injury prevention strategy: Can you just elaborate a little further on that?
Mr Millard: An injury prevention strategy says that there really should be no injury that can't be prevented. One has to approach this avocation and vocation and passion, if you will, with that as your state of mind, that every injury should be considered to be preventable. The internal responsibility system, I think appropriately, says that the employer and the employee have the greatest opportunity to prevent an injury. They become the focus.
Having created that focus on the workplace, then of course it's necessary to say: If that is where the direct responsibilities lie and the direct contribution, where does the indirect responsibility lie? What is the role of the employer? What is the role of the employee? What's the role of the Ministry of Labour? What's the role of the Workers' Compensation Board? What's the role of the safe workplace associations and others, universities, research organizations? You work together to say, "What will each of us do that is complementary to each other, assisting the parties to prevent every injury possible?"
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When we look at the Workers' Compensation Board, we look at some core responsibilities around ensuring prevention and making sure they have appropriate return-to-work strategies that don't result in reinjury, that there is appropriate opportunity to rehabilitate people to work if we as a system fail and there is an injury. The Ministry of Labour determined we must set, communicate and enforce standards. That's our core business in injury prevention.
Universities have a large role to play in research. That's why we're working with universities, other agencies and the Workers' Compensation Board to develop a research network and a research initiative that will invest more money in research.
Safe workplace associations: What should the Industrial Accident Prevention Association be doing in a single strategy? That's why I referenced, in my opening comments, a health and safety system. This must be a system, and it must all aim itself at helping that employer and employee prevent every injury possible in their workplace. That's what we mean by an injury prevention strategy.
Mr Shea: You anticipated a question I wanted to ask you about the roles of the various agencies, because the auditor picked that up in his report, that there was some lack of clarity. I gather from your response you're beginning to get some clarity back into the roles and you're trying to make them all effective in supporting each.
Let me go to another question and ask you if you can agree that every centre of employment is a potential for injury. Could we agree with that?
Mr Millard: I believe that to be the case.
Mr Shea: If that's the case, then would it follow that every centre of employment could be assigned a risk assessment number?
Mr Millard: Let me be careful, because we may be speaking different languages when you say "a risk assessment number." I believe it's possible to analyse the hazards and the risk in every workplace, yes.
Mr Shea: All right.
The Chair: One last question.
Mr Shea: Oh, Lord, forget it. I'll pass it. This is silly.
Mr Jean-Marc Lalonde (Prescott and Russell): You're probably aware that between 1992 and 1994, $50.4 million was paid in compensation to injured Quebec residents on construction sites in Ontario. That was for 5,703 claims. But you are saying on page 13, "Discussions are under way with the Construction Safety Association of Ontario and Industrial Accident Prevention Association."
My question at the present time: When you deal with the construction people, especially in the Ottawa-Carleton area, are you aware that over 40% of the people sitting on those boards of the construction associations are Quebec residents, and also that the majority of non-unionized construction sites are not following the health and safety standards established by the ministry?
Really, when it comes down to that, I know that when you have a planned visit to a construction site, they get ready for that visit. Especially when we look at this amount of money that was paid to Quebec residents, it really scares me that at the present time the Ministry of Labour is planning those visits and those Quebec residents sitting on those boards are advising the Quebec people, "Be careful, the inspectors are coming at this time."
We noticed that the latest construction contract that was awarded for the US embassy in Ottawa again is a Quebec-based construction company. It really scares me because the subcontracts are going to Quebec-based construction workers. I wonder if you people, when you meet those people, realize that the majority of the association members you speak with are not from Ontario and that they're trying to protect the Quebec people.
Mr Millard: I am trying to assimilate all of the information you've provided me with. Do we understand the nature of the workforce in eastern Ontario, particularly as it relates to construction? Yes, and as you will know, M. Lalonde, we worked very hard on the Ontario-Quebec labour mobility agreement for that very reason --
Mr Lalonde: That has gone nowhere.
Mr Millard: -- because there are some distinct characteristics of the nature of work in every region of this province, I want to make it abundantly clear, not just in eastern Ontario but across this province.
When my colleague Paavo Kivisto says inspections are planned, that does not mean that people are notified in advance that we will be inspecting. In fact, it is the rare occasion and it is the exception when the workplace parties know in advance that we will be conducting an inspection. I want to make that abundantly clear. We do not foretell our presence on those construction sites.
If someone else is doing that, then they are doing it with access to information that belongs exclusively to us, and if they have access to that information, I would be interested in knowing how they're getting access to that information and following up on that. We don't alert the parties.
Mr Lalonde: Do you alternate inspectors?
Mr Millard: We do from time to time; in fact, often. Paavo can speak to this in much greater detail, but I know we do alternate and rotate the areas for which an inspector is responsible. That is not because it questions the integrity of our inspectors, it's because it gives them greater opportunity to bring their experience to a new area, often to work with younger inspectors and coach and mentor them. So yes, we do that, but I am not of the view, irrespective of the origin of the employer or the work, that they have any inside knowledge about our intent with respect to inspections. I don't believe that to be the case.
The Chair: Can the Chair step in and ask a question? When was the last time that you or your ministry met with your Quebec counterpart to evaluate what was signed, the Ontario-Quebec agreement? When was the last time you evaluated that agreement?
Mr Millard: As you perhaps know, my assistant deputy minister, Tony Dean, worked tirelessly on that, as did the minister, the Honourable Elizabeth Witmer. I can confer with Tony and see when he last met with his colleagues on the steering committee and get that information to you, Mr Chair. I would be pleased to do so.
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Ms Martel: I want to ask some questions about certification training now. I'm going to follow up from where Mr Hardeman was going, because I think the ministry view about the changes to certification programming, and the view on the ground of people receiving it, is in fact that there has been a cutback. The word you used is that it's "flexibility." Some others would argue that there has been a decrease in the actual number of weeks certified members would receive training, and they are concerned that results in less training, less intensified training and less training in very specific areas for worker-employer reps.
I am just wondering if you can give the committee a sense of, before the agency made its flexibility changes, what a certified employer rep and worker rep would receive in terms of certification training, the number of weeks. It might vary by sector. I know you talked about the fact that the service sector didn't receive a lot of training right up through 1995, but a number of other sectors like mining and industrial did a huge chunk of training for people.
Mr Kivisto: I'm not intimately aware of the specific standards the Workplace Health and Safety Agency has put out in terms of training. The previous standard was from one to three weeks, depending on the nature of the industry. I understand it's now in the nature of three to seven days, depending on the nature of the industry.
The specific numbers about training that's taking place, I've asked the agency to give me that information to review in terms of where there may be noncompliance with certification training across the province. I haven't had that information given to me yet, but I was told it was coming in the next week or two.
Ms Martel: I'd like to receive it, and perhaps you can also ask the agency what has been cut out, then, of the core program to move from even one to three weeks now down to four to seven days. If you could provide that, if it matches up industry by industry under the agency before and the agency now and the differences in weeks and what has been lost, I would appreciate receiving that information.
I wonder if you have information on the operating budgets of the, for lack of a better term, employer associations that provide training and the worker associations or agencies which provide training. I'd be interested in seeing that budget, not only for the last fiscal year -- I'm not sure if you have it in place for 1996-97, and you can give that to us -- but I'd like to have it over three years: 1994-95, fiscal 1995-96 and fiscal 1996-97.
The reason I ask for that information is that I am given to understand that some of the worker agencies which deliver training received a greater proportional cut than the employer agencies, and I'd like to know if that's true. If it is true, I would like to know the reason for that.
Mr Millard: I don't think any of us have that information at hand, Ms Martel, in terms of the budgets.
Mr Kivisto: My information was that the WCB has given budgets to cover the end of June and would be reissuing budgets to go from July 1 onward and as yet they haven't proposed what the moneys would be. I also am aware that they are looking for some administrative savings, as most organizations have in terms of that, from the safety associations, but what the specifics are, I don't have. So we'd have to get that for you.
Ms Martel: I understand even last fiscal year there was a significant proportional difference in the cuts assigned between the employer-led associations and the worker-led. I'd like to know why that is, since they're both delivering training that's certified, that's recognized by the ministry and the province.
The Chair: One very short question, Ms Martel.
Ms Martel: Can you tell me who the representatives were on the review panel for the report on workplace health and safety?
Mr Millard: Brock Smith chaired it; Pat Coursey, who was the assistant deputy minister of operations at that time with the Ministry of Labour; and Pat Dillon, from the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario and IBEW at that time.
Ms Martel: An employer rep?
Mr Millard: I am trying to think, and I can't think, Ms Martel. I'm going from the top of my head. Those are the ones I can give you, but we'll give you that in the same response.
The Chair: One short question from the Progressive Conservatives and then we'll have to look at the time.
Mr Shea: You say one quick question. Are we about to end, Chairman?
The Chair: No, in about 10 minutes we'll be called for a vote in the House. That's why I want to get right on with it.
Mr Shea: Can I pursue the question I was raising about risk assessment? Is the ministry moving in any direction where in fact they might well be able to isolate criteria and apply them to every workplace so that some kind of a risk assessment factor could be assigned to every workplace, which would facilitate the kinds of inspections and priorities to inspections you would want? Can you do that in a way that is done cooperatively with both the industry and the labour sectors and so forth?
Mr Kivisto: Maybe I could comment on that. We develop what we call a sector strategy. For the 16 sectors in industrial for mining and construction, we break out by type of work, by sector, what the injury frequency and costs have been for that sector and what major hazards are rising over the last year or two and are likely to occur there in future years.
We proportion the amount of inspector time to each sector based on that information. In other words, logging gets a certain number of days of inspection time based on their injury record compared to the other sectors. We have, through the WCB online database capability now at the inspector level, to take all of the logging operations in their geography and rank them by their injury performance.
An inspector now will have a list of all of the logging operations in his or her district and be able to say: "These are the ones that are not performing as well as the others are, and here's the average for that sector. These ones are worse; these ones are better." That way the inspector can allocate and plan his or her inspections so they will target the ones that are the poorest performers within that sector.
We have shared our sector strategies with the safety association up front, saying: "Look, here's what we think the hazards are. Here's the injury experience in that sector. Here's where we're planning to spend our time, looking at these kinds of hazards." We asked for their input so that they can then tailor their programs to match.
We're well on the way, this last year, to working in partnership with the safety associations to have a planned strategy for each sector and well on the way -- we started planning with the inspectors in April for the next 12-month period -- to having specific work plans that target the poor performers in an inspector's geography by sector. We'll tell you in a year's time about how effective we were in terms of finding hazards that haven't been addressed and in enforcing the legislation.
Mr Patten: I have a short question. How has your program review and evaluation and internal audit branch been affected by the cutbacks?
Mr Millard: Our internal audit is now provided by the internal audit branch from the Ministry of Finance. We have worked cooperatively with the Ministry of Finance to make sure that we have an effective internal audit capacity in place. One will appreciate very quickly, I am sure, that the Ministry of Finance has a much larger infrastructure than the Ministry of Labour does.
Those who formerly worked directly within my ministry in the audit area would have said that we stretched them too thin and it was hard for them to stay current and on top of, for instance, information technology, all the various areas of the government.
We essentially have a service contract with the Ministry of Finance where we sit with the director of audit from that internal audit branch. My audit committee -- and it's my senior executives -- and I sit with him, in this case. We look at the risks in our organization.
Mr Patten: So you have an internal service contract with finance.
Mr Millard: In response to that, he develops --
Mr Patten: How many people did you lose in that branch, five, 10, 15?
Mr Millard: Less.
Mr Patten: Less than that?
Mr Millard: Yes. In fact, they have been accommodated in -- don't let me say all of them, but most of them have been accommodated within the Ministry of Finance's internal audit branch through reorganization there.
Mr Patten: Could I just make one last comment?
The Chair: Very, very short.
Mr Patten: I would like to ask the auditor to review that new arrangement to see whether -- you said it was, prior to that, too thin -- the quality of the audit internally has improved.
Ms Martel: I wanted to ask a question about the discussion paper on health and safety, particularly any potential changes around the right to refuse, because I for one am certainly concerned that there will be a weakening of work-refusal legislation that may have something to do with the auditor's review and the cost or may have something to do with just a change in philosophy.
On page 6, you said that the discussion paper allows for "clarifying the right to refuse unsafe work to ensure that it's used effectively to rectify unsafe workplace practices and conditions." What is the ministry's view about how you could change the current legislation so that it would on the one hand still protect a worker's right to refuse, but on the other hand clarify in the way you seem to want to in the discussion paper?
Mr Millard: I can with all forthrightness say that the Ministry of Labour does not have a proposal in that regard, Ms Martel. The issue has been raised by many. A number of employers have raised the issue around the number of times the right to refuse is worked when we subsequently come in and find that the situation was unlikely to endanger. Of course, the issue of cost to operation is raised in that context as well. Employees have raised the issue that often it is the only way they can attract the employer's attention to their issue.
There are often, as you know, competing or at least different views with respect to the efficacy and effectiveness of the present system, and so we have solicited comments. We're doing face-to-face consultations as well. As a matter of fact, today the Minister of Labour is meeting with a number of labour groups.
I was fortunate enough to sit in on the CAW consultation just before I came here this morning, and they're progressing with the minister in my absence and will continue this afternoon. Of course, they have a point of view with respect to how to strengthen the right to refuse and make it more effective. We're simply canvassing input. The extent to which those who are vulnerable are protected will be our goal, and in any analysis that'll be our first consideration.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Millard. Before we go on with the PC caucus, the auditor would like to respond to Mr Patten's request.
Mr Erik Peters: Under section 17 of the Audit Act, requests of my office can be made by way of a motion of the committee, rather than by the individual. If it is the wish of the committee that we look into this by way of a motion, then we would be able to do that.
The Chair: Mr Patten, would you like to move a motion?
Mr Patten: Yes, I would like to, in the interest of having lost a service, pass it on to finance. I'd like to move that we ask the Auditor General's office, if they have the information already, because I know they audit these various things, to provide us some comment on the quality of the new service arrangement.
The Chair: Is it the pleasure of the committee that the motion carry? Carried. Very good. Mr Shea, you still have 30 or 40 seconds.
Mr Shea: No, thanks.
The Chair: Good. Any other questions?
Mr Deputy Minister and your colleagues, thank you for appearing before us.
Before we adjourn, I would like to remind you that on May 1 we will complete section 3.17, the property management division. That will be the last section to be revised. In the meantime, the clerk will phone the subcommittee members to talk about our future meetings. This meeting stands adjourned until May 1.
The committee adjourned at 1155.