:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting us.
I am happy to be appearing before you as the Assistant Deputy Minister of the Labour Program. I am joined by my colleague Brenda Baxter, Director General of the Workplace Directorate.
[English]
For over 100 years now, the labour program has been protecting the rights and the well-being of both workers and employers in the federally regulated sectors. This includes creating and maintaining safe and healthy workplaces.
The changes that are being proposed in part 3, division 5, of Bill will strengthen the longstanding commitment even more.
[Translation]
The role of the Labour Program is to support workplace parties in order to enable them to meet their obligations and ensure that the Canadian Labour Code is respected.
[English]
I think we—and I mean the larger “we” in the federal jurisdictions—do a pretty good job overall. For example, the number of disabling injuries in the industry under federal jurisdiction has steadily declined by some 22% from 2007 to 2011, but we certainly need to do more, as every accident is one too many.
Here are the amendments to the Canada Labour Code that we're proposing: first, to strengthen the internal responsibility system; second, to clarify the definition of danger; and third, confer to the Minister of Labour the authority to delegate powers, duties, and functions to health and safety officers.
These amendments will place the onus on resolving workplace safety issues where it belongs: with employers and employees. Specifically, workplace committees and health and safety representatives will have a greater role to play in resolving refusal-to-work situations.
The new process would enhance the internal responsibility system, which would improve protection for Canadian workers and allow the labour program to better focus our attention on critical issues affecting the health and safety of Canadians in their workplaces.
Amendments are proposed to clarify the definition of danger, since over the last 10 years over 80% of refusals to work have ended with no danger decisions, even accounting for appeals.
[Translation]
That has no impact on employees' right to refuse dangerous work. That is a fundamental right that will remain in the Canadian Labour Code.
Those amendments will also help us increase the support we provide to health and safety officers, in addition to promoting consistent decision making across the country.
[English]
The Minister of Labour would have the authority to delegate powers, duties, and functions to health and safety officers, who would continue to do their important job of ensuring that workplaces are fair, safe, and productive. This is not about cutting costs, and it's certainly not about reducing the number of health and safety officers. These changes will simply ensure that the time of health and safety officers is used more proactively and effectively to enforce our regulations and to promote prevention.
[Translation]
It's important to point out that the fundamental rights and the protection mechanisms set out in the code will remain unchanged. The amendments are aimed at simplifying the procedures and practices in order to accelerate and increase the quality of decisions and results. The recourse mechanism will remain accessible to all parties.
[English]
Again, let me reiterate that fundamental rights and protections for employees remain enshrined in the code.
We are convinced that the changes we are proposing will improve outcomes for the workplace.
We would be pleased to respond to your questions.
Thank you.
It's one of the few times we are in agreement. All our brain cells are working at about the same level today. That's so nice.
I have a number of questions. First of all, thank you for coming to make the presentation to us today.
Despite the fact that I've heard your assurances that fundamental rights will remain and protection will remain intact, as you know, there are a lot of concerns about the changes proposed here. We see the changes as far-reaching. They will directly affect the health and safety of Canadian workers, including limiting how an employee may use his or her right to refuse work if he or she feels threatened. None of these changes were announced in the budget, and we have not heard of calls from stakeholders to change the health and safety provisions of the Canada Labour Code.
My questions are, one, could you clarify for the committee what the impetus was for these changes? Did you consult with organizations and unions? If so, how many employers and how many unions? Could you provide us with a list of which stakeholders were consulted on the changes to part 3, division 5, and when they were consulted? Were any discussion papers prepared by Employment and Social Development or the labour program, and if so, can they be tabled for the committee?
These are really some very direct questions that I'm asking for some specifics on.
:
Thank you. It's a very important point.
In the workplace it's the employees and employers who know their workplace and are best placed to determine if there's a particular hazard in the workplace, and best placed to work together to ensure that they identify that hazard and put in place mitigation strategies so that hazard doesn't become a danger. This is what we see as the internal responsibility system. It is the cornerstone of part 2 of the Canada Labour Code.
What we are doing with the proposed amendments is trying to reinforce that internal responsibility system. In fact, this change is strengthening the role of the health and safety committees within that internal responsibility system and within the refusal-to-work process. We're adding a step to ensure that there is an investigation undertaken by the health and safety committee, which is a two-step refusal-to-work process and is consistent with what the majority of the other health and safety jurisdictions in Canada have in place.
It's really ensuring that the Canada Labour Code has the same level of rigour with regard to the refusal to work and the internal responsibility system as the other jurisdictions.
:
Thank you very much for that.
Moving to this model where the minister will be conferred with the authority to delegate powers and duties to a health and safety officer is not different from what we see in different practices within the federal public service programs. As an executive, I'm delegated, through the minister, authorities on things such as financial delegation. Similarly, in programs from privacy administration to transportation of dangerous goods we see this model as well. We think it's important that we have this so we can support our health and safety officers in doing their work.
It's important to note that our health and safety officers do important and difficult work at times, especially when there are investigations of fatalities and injuries in the workplace. The delegation model ensures that we provide them with the support and training in the certification process so that they're up to that task, so they're supported to be able to do those important jobs. That's why we're moving toward this model.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our guests for joining us to answer our questions today.
I will try to build on some of the questions my colleagues asked. I will also try to not talk too fast.
I am somewhat concerned that the percentage of the refused worker claims—which is 80%—is used to justify changing the definition of the word “danger” to restrict and limit it in a way that, I think, is not in the best interest of workers. So we see that, in 80% of the cases—according to your figures—the claim would not be accepted. That means that the right to refuse dangerous work would not be granted. That percentage apparently comes from discussions you are holding within your department.
My colleague Ms. Sims asked you whether any problems were nevertheless identified in the cases that account for that 80%. She also asked you whether the directions were issued by health and safety agencies and whether requests for voluntary compliance were sent by health and safety officers. The answer is that the information we have does not enable us to establish a connection between the two. However, that connection is extremely important for determining whether, in those cases that make up the 80%, there were nevertheless some elements of danger that would be enough to warrant a change in the workplace.
I would like it if your data made it possible to establish that connection. If that is not the case, it means that the problem is not due to the old definition.
:
Thank you for your question.
Mr. Chair, allow me to answer in English.
[English]
I think with respect to the 80% of refusals to work that were found to be not dangerous situations, the workplace may have contained potential hazards. These hazards can be mitigated so they don't create dangerous situations.
Through the amendments, we are reinforcing the internal responsibility system so that those parties can work together to mitigate those hazards before they become dangers. This means those are situations that the parties themselves can resolve, which means our officers can spend their time focusing on the very high-risk sectors and dealing with situations of danger, possibly resulting in a reduction in accidents and injuries.
:
Hazards in the workplace exist; that's just the nature of the workplace. What's important is looking at it as a continuum and seeing who best can address them. The employers have real responsibility to make sure the workplace is safe, and we're there with our officers and are very passionate to ensure that employers meet their responsibilities. Their responsibility to address the hazards is to ensure that employees have protective equipment, that they have training, and that there's a hazard prevention program in place.
Moving down the continuum, when there's disagreement, the employees have a right to participate, a right to know about danger; they have a responsibility to wear protective equipment; and they continue to have the right to refuse dangerous work.
Looking at that continuum, I don't think what you're arguing is dissimilar to what we're saying, which is that what we need to do is spend our time on prevention. When there is a situation in which there is danger, that's a sign that there are problems in the workplace, and there are other tools within the code, within labour relations, in the collective agreement, that the workplaces have available to them to address such a situation.
In the model we're moving to, I think we're actually arguing the same point, which is that by doing this our officers will be able to spend more time to prevent those things from coming forward.
To your question about whether our officers find other things when they go in for refusal, let me say that they find other things when they go in to do inspections up front. In our experience, and I've shadowed a lot of our officers across the country, that's when we do our best work: when we work with the employer ahead of time, together identify where there are potential hazards, and come back to help them with things they can do to improve.
I think that's the right model. It's the internal responsibility system model. That's the model that we see across various jurisdictions.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the department for being here today.
One of the things I've learned is that when you want to have people take responsibility for doing a job, you give them the guidelines and then tell them, “Please do the job.” To address Mr. Cuzner's issue surrounding the 80 health and safety officers, the fact is that the 80 have reduced the number of incidents by 22.5%. Obviously 80 is enough; they're doing the job and they're professional.
I want to touch first of all on the guidelines and the definition of danger. I understand that the guidelines, which we're changing now as far as a definition is concerned, are more in alignment with the provincial definition. Could you clarify this? I could be wrong about it, but I had some notes on it.
The other thing is that these health and safety officers go through a pretty vigorous training. It's not as if you picked somebody off the street; they are professionals. I wonder whether there was any feedback from those professionals.
This is a little bit of a problem here. I think if we could address it, it would give me more time to do, as you said, the preventative work to ensure that the workplace is not only healthy for the employee but safer.
:
Let me add that this process adds the second step, which a lot of our provincial counterparts have, and it's an important step. We've seen that where there are strong employers with good employer-employee relationships, they do this. We've seen it actually work in the workplace to make things better.
To your question about the appeal mechanism, at the end of the day our officers are still going to be available 24/7, and they will make a decision based on two sets of information, possibly, or maybe one: the employer's information and the health and safety committee information.
If there's agreement, then the employer will react to it. If there isn't an agreement, our officers can go in and investigate or look at the reports and so on. Once they make a decision, the recourse mechanism remains. Either party may go to the Occupational Health and Safety Tribunal, which is independent from our organization, to appeal that decision, and should they still disagree with the decision of the adjudicator of the Occupational Health and Safety Tribunal, they can also appeal to the Federal Court. So those mechanisms will remain enshrined.
I want to thank our witnesses for joining us today.
I think that your comments are raising so many questions, especially when it comes to the changes made to the definition of danger. In fact, two criteria are being explained again—that of “imminent threat”, which is a temporal notion, and that of “serious threat”. Those two terms are supposed to help determine whether a workplace involves danger.
I have two concerns about that. First, the definition of long-term dangers—such as exposure to a dangerous substance—is eliminated. The danger would not be imminent, but that exposure may be really dangerous over time. What is done in such cases?
Second, I think this is opening the door to too many loose interpretations of the term “serious”. Depending on the workplace, an employer may simply say that they consider an issue to be serious, while another employer, who may be faced with the same type of problem with a different employee, may say that the issue does not seem serious at all to them.
Some clarifications should definitely be made. However, that restriction may be taking away all the elements that play a part in the true protection of workers.
What can you tell me about that?
:
Thank you for your question.
[English]
If I understand correctly, your concern is with regard to the clarification of the definition of danger and whether or not it continues to provide protections to employees with respect to impacts upon life or health that are longer-term.
The clarified definition does cover that. We're talking about imminent or serious impact to life or health. So if in a workplace employees are not provided with the proper training, the proper protective equipment, and the proper procedures to handle certain substances that could have a serious impact on life or health, whether it is immediate or longer-term, it is still covered within the clarified definition of danger.
Again, just to reiterate, there is no change to the right of an employee to refuse to work. If an employee has a reasonable belief that there is a danger to their life or health, they are able to refuse to work, and to continue to refuse to work, until there is a resolution.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
I'm going to try to focus a bit more on some of the more important factors of ensuring a safe workplace. What I'm speaking about is the expertise of the men and women who serve as health and safety officers.
I'm pleased to hear that the amendments will not reduce the number of safety officers and that these aren't cost-cutting measures; they're more a streamlining of the services in order that the workplace will be more safe.
It's also worth highlighting the fact that from coast to coast to coast the health and safety officers will continue to be available, as you've already said, for 24 hours, seven days a week, to respond to situations of danger in the workplace.
In terms of the amendment that would give the Minister of Labour the power of health and safety officers, could you please explain why these changes are needed and how these amendments address those needs?
:
If I may add, we have a compliance continuum that we look at in terms of looking at our work, supplemented by business intelligence about which sectors, which industry, which companies may be problematic. I don't mean that they're necessarily bad employers, but they just don't know. They could be a new employer and so on.
When you look at that compliance continuum and you look at our officers' roles, if they're spending all of their time on the right side of the continuum, which is responding and addressing issues after the fact, we are missing the opportunity to actually prevent all of that from happening.
As I said, I've had the opportunity to go from coast to coast to shadow and to ride along with our health and safety officers, and I've done both, where they've had to deal with refusals in a very heated capacity, with lots of tensions and emotions and trying to resolve issues. They do a pretty good job of that, quite frankly. But it's a lot of energy spent that they're not spending on the front end, which is going and talking to big employers that have their challenges, that don't have a hazardous prevention program, that haven't built a culture with that. Spending time and energy and effort there has a bigger and a longer-term payoff, in our view. So by moving to this model of an internal responsibility system and freeing our officers up to spend more time in that domain, we think it will have greater results. We have been moving towards that model for quite some time, and you can see the rates for disability and injuries have steadily declined.
Imagine if we can spend more efforts on that, because the accidents and the injuries that are out there are not acceptable. We don't want to see more. We want to prevent them.
This time I'm going to ask my question in English, if it's possible, because my quote is in English.
I have one question. After that I will give the rest of my time to Madame Sims.
I want to understand the new definition of danger, as cut out from the following passage. It “includes any exposure to a hazardous substance that is likely to result in a chronic illness, in disease or in damage to the reproductive system”.
It's disappeared. It's been replaced by occupational illness, which is not the same thing as chronic illness, disease, or damage to the reproductive system. Why are there changes regarding the reproductive system?
:
We're resuming the meeting.
First of all, I'll introduce our witnesses. We have Sari Sairanen and Lana Payne from Unifor.
Before we ask you for your presentation, I want to clarify something with members of the committee.
Earlier, there was some confusion at the start regarding the amount of time allowed for questioning. I was wrong, and I'll accept that responsibility. We agreed in the Standing Orders to do five-minute rounds when we have two one-hour panels. The reason for this, I believe, is that if we have more than one witness—often there are two witnesses in a one-hour panel—it will allow, because there would be two 10-minute presentations, more members time to ask questions, so we move to the five-minute rounds. That, just to clarify, is our future order.
Because we have one witness today, it's been suggested—and I'll seek unanimous consent—that we move to seven-minute rounds in the first round. We have one witness, and we have time to do that.
Do I see any opposition to this?
:
Good afternoon, everyone.
Unifor is the largest private sector union, with 300,000 members, with over 80,000 women and men working in the federal sector, which includes rail, transportation, airlines, and communications, just to name a few. On behalf of our members, we are concerned that Bill is not consistent with enhancing workplace protections and will roll the dice with the health and safety of our federal workers.
At the outset, it is worth noting that none of these changes were the product of collaboration or even consultation. The changes proposed in Bill alter health and safety protections that have only recently been put into place in the year 2000. That is a relatively short amount of time in the life of a piece of legislation. The Canada Labour Code changes of 2000 were reached after extensive consultation with labour, employers, and government, and were themselves a microcosm of what can be achieved through a tripartite system of collaboration.
Words do matter. They certainly matter when they're the words that make up our laws and legislation, and in particular with the laws and legislation that protect workers and public safety.
When we look at the definition of danger, the proposal is a narrower interpretation of what is considered to be workplace danger. Making changes to the wording of a law is to change its original meaning. Gone is the recognition that the outcome of exposure to hazard might not occur immediately. Gone is the explicit language that recognizes that a potential threat to a worker's reproductive system is worth protecting. That threat of exposure to mutagens is a very real threat.
On the right to refuse, as we look at how the right of refusal happens in workplaces, the government maintains that 80% of all work refusals are not justified and are frivolous. What is that number based on? We don't know what the number is based on. Far from progressing frivolous complaints to HRSDC, we are of the opinion that workers are reluctant to invoke their right to refuse even in the face of bona fide dangerous work. Therefore, instead of watering down safety rights around unsafe work, we should be enhancing them, ensuring that workers feel safe from reprisal by reporting unsafe work. In addition, we should be enhancing enforcement and inspection, not rolling back the clock on hard-fought health and safety gains.
When we look at the work refusal investigation, the employer will prepare a written report—this is something new. The workplace committee will prepare a report—this is something new. The employer may provide further information and request reconsideration—again, something new. The employer shall make a decision—something new. If the employer disagrees, it will notify the worker in writing—something new. If the worker continues refusal, the employer will notify the minister and provide a report—something new. The minister will decide whether to continue.
The new emphasis on the immediacy of the danger to the worker is lost in the new prolonged procedure for addressing that danger. Formerly, the legislative process lent itself to taking minutes or hours to determine if the safety officer was required. However, the new proposal, with an emphasis on written reports, would appear to take hours or days, especially in the case of a 24/7 operation, such as the railways or even airlines.
We're quite concerned with the potential of the minister's refusal to investigate work refusals. We're concerned not only by the paper obstacle that seems to be in the new proposal, but also the vulnerability to discipline. To classify as trivial, vexatious, or in bad faith does not certainly bring forward confidence in workers to bring their issues forward. Also, there is no statutory right to appeal from the minister's decision. In addition, the internal responsibility system points out that everyone is concerned with health and safety. Certainly the new proposals are not in that direction. Health and safety officers are neutral and trained. How is a minister going to fulfill that position?
Healthy and safe working conditions are the right of every worker, and a scheme that strips those rights away and puts workers in harm's way is, in a word, a deadly combination.
When we look at some of our workplaces, for example, at CP Rail, despite ever-increasing pressures to increase production and perform new processes, in 2013 to date our membership of 2000 workers under federal jurisdiction progressed two work refusals under section 128, both resulting in directions under paragraph 145(2)(a) for the employer to stop the dangerous activity—only two work refusals in such a large body. We would therefore argue that any attempt to water down the language in such important legislation is unacceptable. Laws and regulations are only as strong as the education and enforcement that go with them and how those laws and regulations are practised in a workplace and enforced by those charged with the protection of our well-being as workers.
We cannot rely totally on employers to make our workplaces safe, because employers have, by their existence, a goal that competes with safety and is to make a profit. We should accept that as a given and build from there. This is also why we need vigilant and proactive government involvement. This does not happen by watering down rights and, in essence, the legislative authority held by those charged with enforcing our safety.
Since 2000, while lost time to injuries in Canada has been steadily declining, fatalities have remained fairly constant, with over 900 deaths each year. It must be noted that the current legislation, with its superior protections for workers, has failed to reduce these fatalities. This begs the question of why we are not instead looking for ways to enhance worker occupational health and safety, rather than eroding their workplace safety rights. We therefore oppose the changes to the health and safety provisions contained in Bill .
That concludes my report.
:
No, but I would add to one of the points that Sari mentioned, and also to the last witnesses you had, around hazards in the workplace.
I'm from Atlantic Canada, and we have a lot of people working in dangerous work in that part of the country, as we do in many of our provinces. What often happens with a work refusal is that it is really a last resort by the worker. It is because they have made, perhaps, many attempts to already solve these hazard problems in their workplace, through their workplace committee, their occupational health and safety committee, or through other procedures.
To say that we're going to resolve all of these problems around hazards simply because the workplace parties are going to work better together I would suggest is not practically what happens in a lot of workplaces.
Secondly, the previous witnesses talked about the fact that we have 80 inspectors. We have over one million workers in federally regulated workplaces, I think, and 80 inspectors is not a big contingent of workplace safety inspectors to cover that number. As you can imagine, these workers are in thousands of workplaces across the country. Even to do one workplace visit by these inspectors would take many years to complete.
The fact that we have workers who would come forward with problems is incredibly important, I think, and we should be encouraging that and not discouraging it with this kind of legislative change.
Thank you.
:
Currently, we don't understand the government's position that 80% of work refusals are frivolous or vexatious. We don't experience that in our workplaces.
Work refusals are the last resort workers use to have their safety concerns addressed by the employer. They have gone through all of the other processes in their workplace. I'm talking about organized workplaces.
In unorganized workplaces, there is a lot more fear of losing employment or experiencing a reprisal. The changes proposed in this bill put a lot more obstacles in front of workers whether they are organized or not. There are lots of reports that need to be written, which was not there. Presumably, it will prolong the process.
When you are exercising your right to refuse, there is danger. You are doing that to bring attention to your situation, because everything else has failed to bring that notice to the employer. So when you're putting more obstacles in front of the workers, it makes the system a lot more onerous, it makes it a lot more cumbersome, and it certainly does not make it a worker-friendly or a health-and-safety-friendly amendment.
I just heard Mr. Armstrong say some things that I did not hear from the officials who appeared before us earlier. He said that, according to the data, 80% of the cases involved no danger. However, we were told earlier that it was impossible to know whether directions had been issued to improve the situation, since a danger was nevertheless identified. That piece of data is probably the reason the legislative amendment proposed by the government is weakened.
Let's say that I am accepting that 80% figure in good faith, even though it seems to have been pulled out of a hat. This would mean that, in 20% of cases, the employee's refusal to work would be considered justified. Do you think that legitimate refusal cases, where workers' health and safety are threatened, may now be brushed aside, while they would have been accepted before? I just want individuals who are in a dangerous situation to be protected.
We've had numerous cases where workers after, particularly in the offshore oil industry, which isn't a federally regulated one but I'll speak to it, felt discouraged from reporting—that we would take care of this problem in the occupational health and safety committee in the workplace.
What you very often get in those committees is that things are discussed but not fully acted upon. It may take many, many months for this to happen.
We just had an inquiry into an incident where 17 people lost their lives in a helicopter crash in Newfoundland. What we found out was that we really need to pay attention to what the experts call the “Swiss cheese” model of health and safety in the workplace. The more gaps there are in terms of our ability to deal with hazards, to report problems, the more “paper safety” approach we have to things.
To me, that's what this legislation does: it turns safety into a paper exercise. Then sometimes the holes in the Swiss cheese line up and things happen. When you chip away at people's rights, it becomes another hole in the Swiss cheese.
I see this happening with this legislation in particular.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing this afternoon.
I did meet your president, Mr. Dias, this morning at our international trade committee. I'll tell you that I cannot say we saw eye to eye on the Canada-EU agreement, but perhaps in this meeting we can make some inroads—
Voices: Oh, oh!
An hon. member: Not likely.
Mr. Devinder Shory: Well, maybe we can make some progress on this labour code issue.
But before I do that, I want to put some facts on the record. The fact is that Unifor is a merger of CAW and CEP.
Ms. Lana Payne: Right.
Mr. Devinder Shory: The fact is that CEP...and you can disagree and put it on the record if you don't agree, but this is all research-based, during the presentation he made this morning. The fact is that CEP officially endorses the NDP. During his recent interview with iPolitics in August, Mr. Dias made some comments. One of those was, and I will quote, that “We will do what we can to make sure—”
The Chair: Ms. Sims.
:
Yes, it's on the point of order.
I'm assuming that Mr. Shory's time has been stopped.
The Chair: Yes, it has.
Mr. Scott Armstrong: On this point of order, I think we have to give Mr. Shory an opportunity to connect what he is saying with....
He hasn't even had a chance to get to his question yet—to his question. I'm assuming he's trying to talk about some motivation for some of the comments made by Mr. Dias in connection with this legislation.
I think you have to give Mr. Shory at least a little bit of leeway so that he can get to his question.
Ms. Jinny Jogindera Sims: Chair—
:
I think I can answer that.
I hope you were listening to the officials, because they said that 80% of all of the claims for unsafe workplaces were found to be incorrect. They were not. The reason the definition is being changed is to make sure, one, it's a modern 2013 definition, and, two, that it mirrors what the 10 provinces are currently doing in their definitions.
I haven't heard anybody today suggest that the provinces don't have adequate protection in their labour codes for workers. I haven't heard one person say that. We're developing standards that are going to mirror exactly what the provinces are doing.
You're a very large union. You operate in all the provinces and territories. You represent workers in all of that. These are the governments of all three political parties that represent the people in their respective provinces. We're going to have a common set of rules and definitions across the whole country. I would think that's a positive aspect of the changes to this bill.
Why would that not be positive, if the federal government is following the same rules and definitions and the same general practices and procedures as the 10 provinces?
I want to thank the witnesses for participating in the study of the bill.
Before being elected, I also worked in factories, in the wood processing and construction sectors. So I know about worker safety.
A worker may be concerned about the danger involved in their position—the danger their job may pose to their health over the long term. They may be working in an environment where ambient air is unhealthy due to the presence of dust or other substances. All the required testing may have been done without finding any elements known to be dangerous, but without adequate studies, some elements may be a source of concern. You may think of cases related to asbestos, and more recently, those involving crystalline silica.
With these amendments, does an employee still have the right to refuse to work? If so, is the assertion of that right more complicated? Do these amendments improve workplace safety, decrease it or change nothing at all?