Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk’s 2019 annual report chides the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development for a dozen lax health and safety practices but otherwise, Lysyk acknowledges that Ontario has had the lowest lost-time injury rates of any province since 2009.
Lysyk released her department’s 2019 annual report at Queen’s Park Dec. 4.
The value-for-money audit of the ministry’s health and safety programs contains 13 recommendations, with 26 action items.
“Our audit concluded that the Ministry has been successful at consistently maintaining the lowest lost-time injury rate in comparison to other provinces,” Lysyk wrote. “Further, the rates of injury in each sector are among the lowest in the country.
“However, the Ministry should not become complacent with these results, as Ontario’s rates have either levelled off or begun to climb in recent years,” Lysyk wrote.
Other value-for-money audits included in volume one of the reports covered health care treatment programs, commercial vehicle safety and enforcement, provincial support to the horse-racing industry and food inspection — 13 topics in total, with only the health and safety audit containing a focus on the construction sector.
There were three other volumes, one of which assessed the Ford government’s environmental plan.
That plan got a failing grade from Lysyk.
“Our audit concluded that the emission-reduction estimates in the plan are not based on sound evidence or sufficient detail,” the report said. “In its current early state, the plan is not likely to achieve its proposed emission-reduction target.”
Other findings in the health and safety section included:
- Enforcement: The audit team reviewed companies inspected at least three times during the past six years and found many of the companies have been issued orders for violations relating to the same type of hazard in multiple years. For example, in the construction sector, 65 per cent of companies reviewed had repeatedly been issued orders relating to falls hazards.
- The ministry’s information system contains only 28 per cent of all businesses in Ontario, leaving many workplaces uninspected.
- The ministry does not identify workplaces for inspection where workers are more likely to get injured, often leaving companies with the highest injury rates uninspected.
- The ministry has not measured the effectiveness of its 2013 Healthy and Safe Ontario Workplaces Strategy despite having established performance indicators that would enable the measurements.
- Although the ministry provides health and safety associations with about $90 million in funding per year, it does not know how effective the associations have been at helping to prevent occupational injury or disease.
- The ministry does not require health and safety associations to account for or repay surplus funding owed to the government.
The audit includes a section where the ministry is permitted comment. The statement from the ministry said, “We are committed to examining areas where oversight processes can be enhanced and to provide the public with greater assurances that these health and safety organizations are fulfilling their mandates in the interests of the employers and workers of Ontario.
“The ministry will develop an implementation plan that outlines specific steps it will take to improve oversight processes.”
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