The Ontario government recently launched an eight-week health and safety awareness campaign designed to enlighten construction workers and their employers.

They unveiled the campaign at Algonquin College, at the site of the school’s  new construction trades building, which will open to about 2,500 construction trades students next year. The new campaign follows a 90-day safety enforcement blitz of more than 2,800 construction sites.

Even though the province’s lost-time injury rate among construction workers is one of the lowest in Canada, the 90-day blitz revealed numerous violations, including improper equipment use and poor supervisor and worker training. As a result, Ontario officials decided that it was time to emphasize the need for the entire construction industry to learn the importance of safety.

The campaign is being run in Canadian cities with the highest construction activity, including Ottawa.  It is sponsored by the Ministry of Labour, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and the Infrastructure Health & Safety Coalition, and will feature newspaper advertising in the key ethnic languages spoken in the construction sector, and posters will appear on construction fences.  Tip sheets for workers will be available on the ministry’s website at www.ontario.ca/ConstructionSafety.

Another aspect of the campaign revolves around a hope that the public can become more involved in providing information to ministry officials. To that end, a toll free phone number (1-877-202-0008) has been established for the public to call in and report safety issues they see. If a follow-up visit deems a jobsite unsafe, the province can issue a stop-work order in the interests of safety.

The Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) has announced a new focus on providing  on quality training and sustainable jobs for injured workers as part of an overhaul of their Labour Market Re-entry (LMR) program.

Based on input from employers and injured workers, as well as the results of an internal review and independent audit in 2009 that identified a need for improvement to the effectiveness and accountability of injured worker re-training in Ontario, WSIB intends to integrate the LMR and Return to Work programs into a new Work Reintegration Program starting later this year.

Among other things, the new program will; work to maintain the relationship between the injured worker and his or her original employer; provide direct WSIB oversight for all re-training services; maximize worker input and choice in their vocational goals; and make greater use of the provincial public education system for injured worker re-training. Ultimately, the program should provide workers with more marketable skills and valid credentials.

The goal of the Work Reintegration Program is to help injured workers return to decent, safe and sustainable jobs and provide Ontario’s employers with more WSIB support in retaining and re-training injured employees, which is important to everyone, including workers, employers, and the Ontario economy.

The Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board would like everyone to know that there is no need to worry about them, despite carrying an unfunded liability in the neighborhood of $12 billion. The board has enough cash on hand to finance 54% of future claims filed by injured workers right now, which might sound dangerous, unless put into perspective. Historically, the funding rate has been as low as 31% and as high as 73% over the years.

Just like a great number of Ontario companies, the WSIB has been hurt financially by the recession. There has been some recovery, but overall, investments were down by $3 billion and employer-paid premiums dropped by $300 million in one year because of the increased number of laid-off employees. But they also worked to reduce their budget, and managed to cut administrative costs by $20 million. That process continues, although progress is slow.

With occupational diseases on the rise, in part because of increases in the number of workers cleaning up asbestos-laced buildings, there has been no slowdown in accident claims. The board gets 40 claims an hour and 360,000 in a year, with the average claim costing $121,000. According to the WSIB, they have the lowest per-claim administrative costs in Canada, but they have the highest caseload.

Ontario has nominated former federal auditor David Marshall as the latest President of the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB), one of the largest workers’ compensation systems in North America.

The nomination is subject to review by the Standing Committee on Government Agencies, but given Marshall’s track record as a well-respected former international banker, diplomat and senior Canadian government executive, he is expected to sail through the process, and will succeed Jill Hutcheon, who is scheduled to retire at the end of January 2010.

The WSIB is an independent agency established in 1915 by the Ontario legislature. The agency provides disability benefits, monitors health care quality and assists in early, safe return to work for workers injured on the job or made ill by an occupational disease. They also administer a no-fault compensation system for workers and employers for workplace injuries and illnesses. The WSIB is overseen by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, and is funded entirely by employers.

The WSIB has faced financial difficulties in recent years, and it’s estimated that the board is $25 billion short on what it expects to pay in claims in the next 40 years. It has also recently taken heat for giving premium rebates to companies where workers died on the job.