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 five 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: Mining inspector field visit activities and orders issued
Program inspector activities 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017
Proactive — consultations 94 80 86 152 131
Proactive — inspections 1,580 1,645 1,655 1,472 1,189
Total proactive field visit activities 1,674 1,725 1,741 1,624 1,320
Total reactive field visit activities — investigations 445 448 475 532 580
Total field visit activities 2,119 2,173 2,216 2,156 1,900
Orders issued 2,930 3,480 4,378 3,696 3,768

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. Mining health and safety program events and injuries
Occupational health and safety events and injuries 2012-2013 2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016 2016-2017
Complaints 152 106 106 104 147
Work refusals 10 7 7 5 15
Fatalities 2 3 6 4 2
Critical injuries 40 31 34 32 32
Other injuries (i.e., non-critical) 85 67 54 53 49

Notes:

  • Fatalities: The Ministry of Labour tracks and reports fatalities at workplaces covered by the 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 also implicated) 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 – Critical Injury 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.
Table 3. Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) allowed lost-time injuriesfootnote 1
Mining industry sector footnote 2 2012 2013 2014 2015
Allowed lost-time claims footnote 3 261 231 184 181
Lost Time Injury (LTI) rate footnote 4 0.87 0.79 0.64 0.63

Notes:

Footnotes

  • footnote[1] Back to paragraph WSIB Schedule 1 mining industry sector classification
  • footnote[2] Back to paragraph WSIB Schedule 1 mining industry sector classification
  • footnote[3] Back to paragraph Industry Sector Allowed Lost Time Claims by Injury/Illness year (Schedule 1 of the WSIB Statistical Report)
  • footnote[4] Back to paragraph LTI rate is allowed LTIs per 100 workers in that year. (Schedule 1 of the WSIB Statistical Report)