Ministry of Labour (MOL) inspectors enforce the Occupational health and safety Act (OHSA) and its regulations at provincially regulated workplaces across the province. As part of the Safe At Work Ontario strategy, they focus on specific sectors where there are:

  • high injury rates
  • history of non-compliance, or
  • certain workplace hazards.

Occupational health and safety inspectors:

  • conduct proactive and reactive field visits, in either a lead or a support role
  • investigate each reported event, in part by conducting reactive field visits and issuing orders, as required. This may include multiple field visits, including workplaces not categorized within their own Occupational Health and Safety program.

The ministry maintains a database where inspectors record their visits to workplaces in conducting inspections, consultations and investigations, along with orders issued. Events that are reported to the ministry, including fatalities, critical injuries, complaints, work refusals, etc., are also recorded.

The MOL analyzes available data when planning for enforcement initiatives and blitzes such as those outlined in this sector plan. A breakdown of the field visit activities conducted by inspectors and key categories of reported events for the past 5 fiscal years are presented in the tables below.

A summary of activities of inspectors within this program, including those conducted as part of the Safe At Work Ontario blitzes and initiatives, is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. IHSP inspector field visit activities and orders issued

This table provides the Ministry of Labour’s program activities for the industrial sector.
Program inspector activities2012-20132013-20142014-20152015-20162016-2017
Proactive − consultations385273276375377
Proactive − inspections19,31516,37613,86417,90115,013
Total proactive field visit activities19,70016,64914,14018,27615,390
Total reactive field visit activities − investigations17,82018,00616,49719,89721,282
Total field visit activities37,52036,65530,63738,17336,672
Orders issued63,20054,94455,49968,56754,862

Notes:

  • Proactive field visits are either inspections or consultations.
  • Reactive field visits are investigations made in response to events reported to the MOL. Events and injuries are listed in Table 2.
  • Orders issued represent all those issued by ministry inspectors within this Occupational Health and Safety program.
  • Data are subject to change due to updates in the enforcement database.

Occupational health and safety events and injuries reported to the Ministry of Labour are summarized in Table 2. Only events reported to the ministry are included here. Except for fatalities, event categories in the ministry’s data set are based on what was assigned at the time of the initial report to the ministry. The reported event category may not represent what actually occurred at the workplace.

Table 2. IHSP events and injuries

This table provides the events and injuries for the industrial sector
OHS events and injuries2012-20132013-20142014-20152015-20162016-2017
Complaints6,3296,7966,7067,4048,633
Work refusals157114197213159
Fatalities2644312432
Critical injuries823820721580806
Other injuries (i.e., non-critical)2,8442,6522,3442,4402,483

Notes:

  • Fatalities: The Ministry of Labour tracks and reports fatalities at workplaces covered by the Occupational health and safety Act (OHSA). This excludes death from natural causes, death of non-workers at a workplace, suicides, death as a result of a criminal act or traffic accident (unless the OHSA is applicable) and death from occupational exposures that occurred many years ago.
  • Critical injuries: The critical injury numbers represent critical injuries reported to the ministry and not necessarily critical injuries as defined by Regulation 834 under the OHSA. Non-workers who are critically injured may also be included in the ministry’s data.
  • Data are subject to change due to updates in the enforcement database.