OHS officers to issue tickets, hefty fines under new system
Alberta is beefing up its health and safety codes by giving inspectors more power and overhauling its ticketing system.
Last month, the first class of occupational health and safety officers graduated from peace officer training. OHS peace officers will be able to write on-the-spot tickets and dole out fines to employers and employees that violate labour codes.
The new ticketing system is twofold. An on-the-spot ticket, similar to a traffic ticket, is an immediate penalty that ranges between $100 and $500 for Occupational Health and Safety Act violations. Officers will also be able to recommend an administrative penalty, which would go to the justice system and, if the parties are found guilty, could set an offender back up to $10,000 per day, per violation.
"If you are one of the players or an employee who thinks you know better, thinks that the law doesn’t apply to you, then I would start worrying because your pocketbook is going to get hit quite heavily and quite often," said Thomas Lukaszuk, Alberta’s labour minister.
Elevating OHS inspectors to peace officer status will send a message to would-be offenders to take health and safety more seriously, he said.
"The problem was that a situation would arise where an OHS officer would be working with an employer and found that the message simply wasn’t getting across," Lukaszuk explained. "They needed some hard-hitting enforcement methods."
Currently, the province has about 140 OHS officers, who all undergo training and receive the peace officer designation in just over a year.
The fact that employers and workers will now face financial penalties for the first time is having an impact, said Brookes Merritt, spokesperson for the government’s OHS department.
"What we’re hearing from stakeholders is that they’re generally supportive of the new measures, and they understand that, now, when there’s money on the line, there’s certainly incentive to do better," Merritt said, adding, "It’s not a slap on the wrist — it’s fairly costly. On the administrative penalty side, the intent there is that very clearly the penalties, if they’re warranted, will be beyond the cost of doing business for most operators in the province."
Whereas previously inspectors were only able to issue stop-work, stop-use orders and the like, writing up tickets and issuing fines will stop health and safety violations at the source.
Before, there was a gap in the enforcement spectrum between education, issuing orders and prosecution through the courts, Merritt explained. Orders carried little to no weight while prosecution proved much more expensive. The new system combines the best of both.
"The spirit of these two new penalties was to fill the gap on the enforcement spectrum where we have something that is financially punitive, but less taxing than full-blown prosecution through the courts," he said.
By any other name
President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Gil McGowan, called the new ticketing system an important and long overdue change — something the labour federation has been lobbying for for decades. However, the peace officer designation for OHS officers does not change much on the ground, he added.
"What’s more important are the tools available to inspectors when it comes to enforcing the code and keeping workers safe," McGowan explained. "These kind of systems work in terms of safety because they give inspectors tools that allow them to act quickly and effectively to address safety concerns that they see on the ground."
However, McGowan argued ticketing by itself is not enough to effectively manage occupational safety in a province such as Alberta. More inspectors, industry-targeted inspections and more prosecutions for serious offences are needed.
"As it stands right now, we have fewer inspectors per worker than most other provinces, which is particularly problematic when you consider that we have many more people working in dangerous occupations than other provinces," McGowan said, citing the booming oil and gas and construction sectors.
Because the energy industry is expanding so rapidly in Alberta, McGowan said safety is often left simmering on the backburner. As such, employers tend to cut corners and put workers in harm’s way. Regardless of the official title of the inspector, the process must be reinforced further in order to adequately address the problem, he added.
"The introduction of the ticketing system needs to be seen in the context of what is actually happening with workplace health and safety here in Alberta — and, frankly, it’s a context that remains disappointing and troubling."
No tickets had been issued by OHS peace officers as of press time.
