Basic health and safety awareness training becomes mandatory for farm workers in Ontario

Friday, May 16, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

New regulations under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act coming into effect this summer will require employers, including farmers, to provide basic health and safety awareness training to all workers and supervisors covered under the provincial legislation.

But finding the training materials to use could quickly turn into a scavenger hunt, if one farmer’s experience is any indication.

Ken Forth, chair the agricultural industry’s Labour Issues Coordinating Committee, says he has been to his area Service Ontario office two or three times since early April to try to obtain the worker training booklets, and his wife also checked for the booklets at another location, but they were unable to get them. Because he’s associated with a safety association, however, he was able to get some worker booklets printed.

“It’s a real boondoggle,” he says, pointing out the regulations come into effect July 1.

Forth says he was able to order the supervisor booklets via the labour ministry’s website.

Ontario labour ministry spokesman Bruce Skeaff says he didn’t know if there is a shortage of the worker booklets. But people can call the Ministry of Labour Health and Safety Contact Centre at 1-877-202-0008 for information on how to get them or with any other questions about the new regulation.

The labour ministry says on its website employers don’t have to use the ministry’s booklets. They can use training materials from other sources “as long as the training meets the minimum content requirements set out in the regulation.”

Forth says employers can go through the booklets with workers and supervisors or the employees can go through it alone “so they’re familiarized with the whole thing and then they sign it (the booklet) and you keep it in their file.”

The training takes about two or three hours, he notes.

The labour ministry says on its website that as part of the new regulations employers must keep records showing workers and supervisors have completed the awareness training program.

Mandatory basic health and safety awareness training for workers was one of the key recommendations of the province’s Expert Advisory Panel final report. The panel was appointed to review the province’s occupational health and safety system after a scaffolding accident in 2009 killed four workers.

Forth says if labour ministry officials audit a farm, they may check to see if the farm’s workers and supervisors have completed the basic safety awareness training program.

The labour ministry says employees must complete the basis safety training as soon as reasonably possible and supervisors must do it within one week of starting work as a supervisor. BF