OH&S Canada July/August 2014

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E J ULY/ AU G U S T 2014

C A N A D A

HEAD to HEAD Keeping violence on ice in check

SLITHERING BLACK GOLD Pipeline project sparks safety concerns

HIDE AND SEEK

Manitoba targets injury-claim suppression

PACKING ON THE POUNDS

Expanding waistlines, diminishing bottom lines

A HELPING HAND

The lowdown on first-aid kits

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C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E

FEATURES

CL AI M SUP P R ES S ION 22

CC A A NNA AD DA A

Under the Carpet

J U LY / A UGU S T 2014 Volu m e 3 0 , N u m b e r 5

Manitoba is setting its sights on employers who game the system, as reports reveal the suppression of worker-injury claims in the province.

BY KELLY PUTTER

PI PE L I N ES 28

Go East

Safety and energy needs go head-to-head, as Canada’s largest pipeline project seeks approval to move forward with its development plans.

BY WILLIAM M. GLENN

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CO NCU S S ION

On Thin Ice

Lawsuits against the National Hockey League underscore the dangers of fighting on ice. Is it time to eliminate violence in Canada’s favourite sport?

BY ELLIE GORDON-MOERSHEL

DEPARTMENTS

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S AF E T Y GEAR

Beyond Band-Aid

While employers are legally required to provide first-aid kits, the medical supplies needed in each workplace vary according to the industry and the hazards faced.

BY CARMELLE WOLFSON

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ACCI DE N T P R EV EN TION

On the Road

Drivers should take note as the construction season kicks in over the summer.

For many workers, these work zones present numerous dangers.

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H E ALT H WATC H

Tightening the Belt

IN THIS ISSUE ED ITORIA L

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While new research shows that overweight employees cost employers more, the safety risks that obesity poses to these workers may not be so clear-cut.

PAN ORAMA

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TIME OUT

LETTERS

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OH &S UPD AT E

Suspect charged in sawmill shooting in British Columbia; fatalities at Alberta oilsands site; RCMP takes on mental illness; New Brunswick beefs up inspections; Newfoundland and Labrador mulls whistleblower legislation; and more.

BY JEFF COTTRILL

Nuts about hockey; dump fire; cab sick; flying weapon, crouching woman; stale-bun stick-up; trigger-happy; and more.

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D ISPATCHES

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SAFETY 20 1 4 GLOBAL P ET R O L EU M S HO W 2 0 1 4 P R ODUC T S HO W C A S E AD IN D EX

48 50 52 53

Tree planters vindicated; Alberta tackles labour relations; apps aid pain sufferers; and more.

COVER IMAGE: VADIM VAHRAMEEV, ILLUSTRATION SOURCE

A Fractured View

We now have unshakable conviction that accident causes are man-made and that a man-made problem can be solved by men and women.

– W.H. CAMERON

www.ohscanada.com

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EDITORIAL

C A N A D A’ S O C C U PAT I O N A L H E A LT H & S A F E T Y M A G A Z I N E

A Fractured View A

EDITOR JEAN LIAN jlian@ohscanada.com

report out of the United States, which found a connection between fracking fluids and worker fatalities, should serve as a wake-up call for Canada’s burgeoning oil and gas sector.

On May 19, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Washington, D.C. confirmed that at least four workers have died since 2010 from what appears to have been acute chemical exposures during flowback operations at well sites in the Williston Basin in North Dakota and Montana. Although not all of these investigations are complete, the NIOSH said information suggested that these cases involved workers who had been gauging flowback or production tanks or transferring flowback fluids at the well sites.

While four worker fatalities may not seem high from an industry perspective, these incidents raise questions regarding fracking fluids and the hazards they pose to employees working with these chemicals. The composition of high-pressure fluids used to fracture the rock and release natural gas are often highly guarded trade secrets. While the additives used in fracturing fluids are generically similar, different mixes of chemicals are used based on site conditions and local geology.

As such, companies are reluctant to disclose these recipes so as to protect their competitive advantage.

In Canada, regulatory requirements surrounding the disclosure of fracking chemicals are patchy at best. While some companies provide full disclosure voluntarily, others claim that the confidentiality of the recipes must be protected. As regulatory approvals for fracking activities fall largely under provincial jurisdiction, with several aspects covered under federal legislation, Ottawa has sometimes been criticized for adopting a “hands-off ” approach to fracking.

That said, oil and gas companies in Canada are coming under increasing pressure to reveal the toxic brew that makes up fracking fluids. For example, British Columbia and Alberta require operators to post on a public website (fracfocus. ca) the chemical additives used in their fracturing fluids on a per-well basis, along with their maximum concentration, within 30 days of completing a fracturing job.

In June, the Northwest Territories announced that it would start developing regulations under the territory’s Oil and Gas Operations Act to set out filing requirements for projects involving hydraulic fracturing. David Ramsey, Minister of Justice and Industry, Tourism and Investment in Yellowknife, said fracking had spurred worker safety concerns, particularly around the risk of exposure to silica.

While a whopping 98 per cent of fracking fluid comprises water and sand, the remaining two per cent is a combination of chemicals that can simply be described as nasty. Given the quantity of water required for most fracturing operations, the miniscule percentage of additives translates into significant amounts of chemicals used, notes a 2014 report, Environmental Impacts of Shale Gas Extraction in Canada, by the Council of Canadian Academies. The report also points to a knowledge gap between the large-scale deployment of technologies used by Canada’s shale-gas industry and their implications on both the environment and human health.

Perhaps the toxicity of fracking fluids is best reflected in the industry’s resistance to disclose the chemical make-up of these fluids. In May, North Carolina voted against disclosure by passing a bill that would make it a crime to reveal the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, citing the need to protect trade secrets.

Recent developments in Canada, which seem to point towards disclosure, are encouraging, since no trade secret — however compelling from a business standpoint — should ever trump human lives.

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Jean Lian

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ohs canada

C A N A D A

Vol. 30, No. 5 JULY/AUGUST 2014

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Pipeline Magazine

JASON CONTANT JContant@bizinfogroup.ca

CARMELLE WOLFSON ASSISTANT EDITOR cwolfson@ohscanada.com EDITORIAL ASSISTANT JEFF COTTRILL jcottrill@ohscanada.com ART DIRECTOR PRINT PRODUCTION MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER MARKETING SPECIALIST CIRCULATION MANAGER

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

PUBLISHER

PRESIDENT, BUSINESS INFORMATION GROUP

ANNE MIRON PHYLLIS WRIGHT GARY WHITE DIMITRY EPELBAUM BARBARA ADELT badelt@bizinfogroup.ca SHEILA HEMSLEY shemsley@ohscanada.com PETER BOXER pboxer@ohscanada.com BRUCE CREIGHTON

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS

DAVID IRETON, Safety Professional, Brampton, Ont. AL JOHNSON, Vice President, Prevention Services WorkSafeBC, Richmond, B.C. JANE LEMKE, Program Manager, OHN Certification Program, Mohawk College, Hamilton, Ont.

DON MITCHELL, Safety Consultant, Mississauga, Ont. MICHELE PARENT, National Manager, Risk Management and Health and Wellness,

Standard Life, Montreal, Que. TERRY RYAN, Workers’ Compensation and Safety Consultant, TRC Group Inc., Mississauga, Ont. DON SAYERS, Principal Consultant, Don Sayers & Associates, Hanwell, N.B. DAVID SHANE, National Director, Health and Safety, Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa, Ont. HENRY SKJERVEN, President, The Skjerven Cattle Company Ltd., Wynyard, Sask.

PETER STRAHLENDORF, Assistant Professor, School of Environmental Health, Ryerson Polytechnic University, Toronto, Ont. JONATHAN TYSON, Association of Canadian Ergonomists/Association canadienne d’ergonomie, North Bay, Ont.

OHS CANADA is the magazine for people who make decisions about health and safety in the workplace. It is designed to keep workers, managers and safety professionals informed on oh&s issues, up to date on new developments and in touch with current thinking in the oh&s community.

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Date of issue: JULY/AUGUST 2014

panorama

149,281

Number of worker-injury claims reported to the Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta in 2013. The board released its annual report on June 2.

Source: Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta

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1. Left Hand, Right Hand: Criminalizing clients endangers sex-worker safety in Vancouver, concludes a study by the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the University of British Columbia, released on June 3. The study says the Vancouver Police Department’s new policy of criminalizing clients increases sex workers’ risks for violence and health-related harms by displacing sex workers to isolated spaces and making it difficult for them to screen prospective clients, negotiate the terms of transactions and access police protection.

Source: British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

2. Summer

Blitz: This summer, workplace health and safety officers will conduct focused worksite inspections at residential buildings across Alberta to reduce worker injuries. An inspection report of the blitz, which runs from mid-June through the summer construction season, will be made public upon completion of the campaign.

Source: Alberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour

3. Health Smart: Manitoba held its annual Commuter Challenge Week from June 1 to 7, during which residents in the province were encouraged to cycle, walk, run, take a bus or carpool to work or school. Last year, the event reduced 120 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions, saved approximately 54,000 litres of fuel and burned 8.2 Source: Government of Manitoba million calories, according to Healthy Living and Seniors Minister Sharon Blady.

4. Common

Ground: Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil has signed a memorandum of understanding with the three other Atlantic provinces to establish common training, certifications and standards to help apprentices complete training and work within the region more easily. The first-of-its-kind agreement was signed on May 26 Source: Nova Scotia Premier’s Office and will focus on 10 trades.

5. Ships Ahoy: Eleven new members were appointed to the Board of Directors of the Newfoundland and Labrador Fish Harvesting Safety Association (NL-FHSA) on May 30. The board members represent crew members, owners/operators, processors, unions, industry groups and ex-offico members from the Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission and the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. The NL-FHSA aims to reduce workplace injuries, illnesses and fatalities in the fish-harvesting industry.

Source: Newfoundland and Labrador Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission

360° 6

TRAGEDY UNDERGROUND A coal-mine accident in the southwestern city of Chongqing, China has claimed 22 lives and injured two. It is unclear if an explosion was the cause of the incident, which took place on the afternoon of June 3. The Xinhua News Agency reports that 28 people were working in the shaft at the time and that six managed to escape, including the two who were injured.

Source: The Associated Press

100,000

Estimated number of jobs expected to be generated over the next decade in Canada’s oilsands construction, maintenance and operations fields.

Source: Oil Sands Construction, Maintenance and Operations Labour Demand Outlook to 2023 report

$9,800

Fine issued to Empire Foundations Inc. in Saskatoon, after the company pleaded guilty to two counts under the oh&s legislation on May 20. The charges relate to an inspection at a worksite, where a safety officer observed workers working in a trench that was not properly shored and sloped.

Source: Government of Saskatchewan

$1

Amount of money Farm Credit Canada pledged to donate for every retweet, like or share on social media that included the hashtag #backtoag made between May 29 and June 13. The donation, up to $100,000, will go to Back to Ag, a program that helps injured farmers return to agriculture work.

Source: Farm Credit Canada

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ohs canada

LETTERS

Recent issues of ohs canada and our website, www.ohscanada.com, have provided readers with plenty to chew on.

BEAR KILLS WOMAN A woman was killed by a black bear while working at an oilsands site. (the canadian press, May 8, 2014) One fatal bear attack is one too many.

Instead of studying the problem to death, make a logical decision, which is to train workers who are exposed to this work hazard in the proper use of personal protection, i.e. a firearm capable of being carried by the worker. And provide the worker with the proper firearm capable of stopping a large animal, such as a bear. Noise makers and bear spray do not stop a hungry or angry bear. The safety of the worker is the first priority.

J. Maclean

I have worked in the bush for 30 years and had to destroy three animals who were threatening my crews. No one wants to do this, but when you call the authorities, they will always tell you it will be at least two weeks until they can send a trap, if a trap becomes available.

That is the reality.

What kind of a party chief would not have a gun available for an event like this? It is simply irresponsible behaviour not to give people the ability to protect themselves in the bush.

Art Esian

BLANKET MEASURE Ottawa imposed a moratorium on Canada’s foodservices sector’s access to the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) Program. (canadian occupational health and safety news (cohsn), May 5, 2014) Punishment should be an isolated case; it should not be applied to the whole industry. Most TFWs are educated, so give us time to process our residency.

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That is what the country likes, right? To bring in highly skilled workers. If the problem is the rising number of TFWs, why not give a cap or limit every year, so that the influx of foreign workers will be controlled? Give a chance and opportunity to those who are already here, because we already gave up our jobs back home. Some even spent lots just to come here, even though the nature of work is more difficult than our previous jobs. I know and I believe most Canadians are immigrants too.

Veny

Now, people leaving the so-called “third-world country” will lose a chance to have a better life! Like me, who is a Filipino working in British Columbia as a cook. But the promise of the employer that he will help me on my papers just became a dream. So please have some new law that will help people like me, whose only dream is for a 14-year-old daughter’s bright future and to be with my common-law partner.

not realize that all variations of this technology (cell phones, cell towers, Wi-Fi and cordless home phones) are inextricably intertwined like a house of cards. If you say that one of them is a danger to human health, you have to say that for all of them.

EMF Aware

CLAIM SUPPRESSION UNCOVERED The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba released a report on injuryclaim suppression. (cohsn, April 7, 2014) A very disturbing report. I would love to see the same studies completed in every province in Canada and some form of public communication of what is happening, and what they can do if they feel they are being pressured into not reporting workplace injuries.

Kevin Milligan

Real Mackoy

FATALITY PROMPTS PROBE

RETHINKING “SAFE”

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour investigated a fatality at a Vale smelter in Sudbury. (cohsn, April 14, 2014)

An expert panel says safe-exposure guidelines for cellular and Wi-Fi radio waves are acceptable. (the canadian press, April 1, 2014) Wireless radiation is likely to harm and kill far more Canadians than tobacco smoking. Readers should do their own homework about the threat to their health and their children’s health. A good place to see some of the scientific evidence is The Bioinitiative Report, which can be accessed free at www. bioinitiative.org. An Internet search for “health effects of electromagnetic radiation” will show you more dangers.

Martin Weatherall

Health Canada will hold onto its assertion that current levels are safe as long as possible. The majority of people do

I find it disturbing to see the continual fatalities occurring. It appears that Vale’s safety system needs an overhaul.

Nadine Neil

NO TO RANDOM TESTING A grievance arbitration board in Alberta has found a random-testing policy unreasonable for Suncor workers. (ohs canada, June 2014) First and foremost, safety policies and processes focus on prevention. Knowing the statistics of social alcohol and drug use, it’s prudent to perform random testing in order to know who is placing the workforce and company at risk and take proactive measures before

someone is injured or killed. Users are wise in how to “fix” their samples, but random equals surprise testing with no chance for preparation. That’s the point.

My stance is that urine samples are not enough to catch certain drugs that could be of major concern, yet employers do not want to “inconvenience” their employees further or spend the additional money. Second, what of those contracts that require random drug testing? Is a company supposed to not seek out those clients, because they cannot live up to the contract terms?

Many times, the person injured or killed is not the user, yet a user was ultimately responsible for what happened to them. It is quite possible that the user will not be discovered and tested due to the impossibility of proving where in the chain of events they caused the incident.

Trish Ross

The safety of many far outweighs the inconvenience of a few to have a drug test to determine if they are working safely in a “safety-critical” position. However, the “do-gooders” of our society do not agree, and unfortunately, more and more “social drug users” — not addicts — are getting into positions of authority and decision making…

I suggest that in preference to random drug testing, industry consider subjecting employees in safety-critical positions to random cognitive-ability testing. The first couple of tests establishes the employee’s norm and, thereafter, can indicate cognitive impairment.

Ron Clerk

WORKER’S FINGERS AMPUTATED Maple Leaf Consumer Foods was fined after a worker lost fingers in a machine. (the canadian press, March 24, 2014) It is unfortunate that these accidents are still happening. Yes, I agree that the company should have ensured that the machine’s blade safety was operating properly (slowing down when the guard was removed — this is supposed to be done during your pre-ops).

But where is the onus on the worker to not do something that will injure them? This responsibility is laid right out in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Section 28 (2)(b): No worker

shall use or operate any equipment, machine, device or thing or work in a manner that may endanger himself, herself or any other worker.

Employees need to start taking responsibility for their own safety. It is common sense not to use a tool on a moving piece of equipment!

Safety First

Such a basic health and safety issue that was long ago resolved by root-cause analysis and ergonomic design by ergonomists and engineers. I find it hard to believe that these types of injuries still occur.

Jane E. Sleeth

RAINING ROCK A worker died after being hit by a falling rock at a mine operation in British Columbia. (cohsn, March 24, 2014) The Health, Safety and Reclamation Code for Mines in British Columbia is outdated. Not enough mine inspectors for the number of mines in British Columbia. They are so busy with incidents, and infraction site inspections are not happening as they should.

Colin

GREEN LIGHT Energy corporation Enbridge Inc. is moving ahead with a controversial pipeline project. (cohsn, March 17, 2014) Perhaps a reality check is due on this issue. Our nation needs oil moved from A to B location. The oil will be shipped by one conveyance or another. Period.

Perhaps the anti-pipeline folks would prefer the risk of a Lac-Mégantic-type accident in Toronto, or a convoy of highway tanker crashes at 401 and the Don Valley Parkway, or an Exxon Valdez in the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Alternatives to pipeline are more expensive and/or more risky. Impeding the flow of hydrocarbons in the pipelines could prompt, even justify, a significant increase in our already high fuel prices.

The pipeline industry has an exemplary safety record and is, by far, the most economical method of shipping

high volumes of liquids. The National Energy Board has a staff of very professional and pipeline-knowledgeable engineers tasked with ensuring the safety of the pipeline industry.

In conclusion, give up the fear-mongering and work at something to contribute to society, instead of looking for a way to block progress.

Rapid Wrambler

STAYING IN LINE British Columbia has introduced new regulations on workplace bullying. (ohs canada, March 2014) It is with enormous interest that I read your publication’s article, When the Boss is the Bully. This is a serious, growing issue in many Canadian workplaces, and many have their own stories to tell.

Recently, I personally suffered through seven years of very subtle bullying and overt, unprofessional favouritism from an arrogant, corporate-ladder-climbing human resources director at a large home healthcare organization in Toronto. This very subtle bullying, which took many forms, was directed not only at myself, but at many of my female colleagues within her department.

The morale within the organization was dismal, and the rate of staff turnover within the human resources department was staggering… and yet the CEO did nothing and was, alas, an enabler. I ended up suddenly leaving the organization several months ago, but only after an outburst of temper, which I could no longer contain…

Policies do little to abate this kind of corporate behaviour. It requires ethical, responsible, mature and professional management and monitoring at the very top of an organization. For many people like myself, the only option is to just get out and move on, but then sadly, the high, costly rates of staff turnover (and for the former employee starting over) will remain.

Bill

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OH&S UPDATE

ICE ON WING CITED IN CRASH FEDERAL — The combination of wing icing and an overloaded aircraft led to a fatal plane crash in Manitoba two years ago, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) concludes in an investigation report, released on May 15.

On November 18, 2012, a Cessna 208B operated by Gogal Air Services Ltd. left Snow Lake, Manitoba for Winnipeg. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft struck terrain in a wooded area about one mile beyond the end of the runway, killing the pilot and seriously injuring seven passengers.

The TSB investigation found that the aircraft had exceeded its maximum gross takeoff weight limit by approximately 600 pounds and that the wing and tail leading edges had been loaded with ice.

“These factors had the combined effect of increasing the stall speed of the aircraft, reducing its takeoff and climb perfor-

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mance and impairing the protection afforded by its stall warning system.”

The report adds that the aircraft had likely been operating in instrument meteorological conditions on the day before the incident, conditions for which Gogal Air Services was not authorized.

FISHING FATALITIES DECLINE FEDERAL — Fatalities in the British Columbia fishing sector have declined sharply over the past decade, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) reports.

Statistics released by the board on May 24 indicate that the west coast has seen an average of 2.33 deaths per year in its fishing industry since 2004 — a decline from 4.16 in previous years.

“We are very encouraged by those kinds of numbers,” says the TSB’s senior marine investigator Glenn Budden. “We have seen some really good signs in the initiatives going on across the country, in-

cluding British Columbia, where we see safety improving.”

But Budden says the TSB is concerned that its scale for measuring fishing safety may not be sufficient. “The numbers we are using right now are fatality numbers,” he notes. “But we are not sure as an organization if that is the best measure of fishing-vessel safety.”

He adds that the fatality numbers across Canada remain relatively high, with one fatality per month on average.

Budden attributes improvements in the province’s safety record to public education and awareness of fishing safety. In 2004, the province’s fishing sector established Fish SAFE, Canada’s first fishingsafety organization, to improve safety on commercial fishing vessels.

“When we came on the scene, the number of capsizings was the main cause of fatalities in British Columbia,” says Gina McKay, program manager with Fish SAFE. She adds that this program has led to a 44 per cent reduction

UNION RESPONDS TO THREATS OF VIOLENCE VICTORIA — The British Columbia Government and General

Employees’ Union (BCGEU) has been working with the province’s Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation (MSDSI) to help protect the ministry’s employees from violence, particularly during a recent cheque-issuing week.

According to the BCGEU, MSDSI workers have been reporting death threats and rocks thrown through office windows with increasing frequency. As a result, the union and the ministry conducted several meetings to plan for extra protection during the cheque-issuing week at the end of May, including assigning additional security guards at all MSDSI cheque-issuing offices.

Doug Kinna, vice-president of the BCGEU’s social information health component, notes that a technological failure indirectly led to the recent spate of threats and other incidents. The computer system that the income-assistance employees use, Integrated Case Management, had gone down.

“They could not do their work properly for about a week,” Kinna says of the workers. As a result, clients could not receive cheques or medical transportation. “When people are frustrated, they tend to act out, especially when you have got hungry kids at home.”

Fortunately, Kinna says no actual assaults occurred. “The ministry said that any office that wanted security could have it, and they beefed up security in offices.”

A statement from the ministry says it takes the health and

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ohs canada

well-being of its staff and the people it serves very seriously.

“During the ministry’s June income-assistance cheque run, there were no increases in critical incidents reported by the ministry’s regional offices,” the statement notes. “Reports from the ministry’s five regional offices are that their staff felt safe, well prepared and well supported on cheque-issue day.”

The ministry also confirms that “a system traffic jam” had caused the temporary work stoppage in late May. “Systems experts have identified various factors that may have contributed to the recent system slowdown,” the ministry says.

On May 27, the BCGEU released a statement announcing extra security in MSDSI offices for that week and reminding ministry employees of their right to refuse unsafe work if there is reasonable cause to believe that there is a safety risk.

The BCGEU also advised MSDSI workers to report any concerns about violence to their supervisors, who are obligated to investigate the risks. “If the supervisor disagrees,” the union says, “you have the right to bring in a member of your joint occupational health and safety committee or a union steward to participate in further investigation.”

Kinna says occasional violent threats had already been a problem for MSDSI employees. “It has been happening for a while, and then when the computer went down, it was a huge escalation,” he says. “Now that the computer system seems to be running properly, everything has sort of calmed down.”

— By Jeff Cottrill

in fishing fatalities.

Resource management may also have played a role in British Columbia’s improving situation, Budden suggests.

“They have taken fisheries-management steps that have made the fisheries somewhat safer, giving the fishermen more options,” he says, citing quota fisheries. “Fishermen have some other options rather than to race for the fish.”

He adds that Transport Canada is in the process of changing fishing-safety regulations with additional focus on fishing-vessel stability requirements.

Despite Fish SAFE’s efforts in the province, the fishing sector remains a dangerous profession nationwide. Nova Scotia saw eight fatalities in the fishing industry in 2013, and fishing workers there are 34 times more likely to die by traumatic injury than other workers are.

Regarding the Risks and Benefits of Hydraulic Fracturing said it would travel to 12 communities in the territory from June 23 to 26 to hold public hearings, with the mandate of developing a science-based understanding of hydraulic fracturing.

Dr. Brendan Hanley, Yukon’s chief medical officer of health, says some of the industrial chemicals used in the fracking process are carcinogenic, but the “real risk due to exposure is unknown.”

Fracking sand also contains water, silica sand and chemicals, which poses the risk of silicosis, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

FATIGUE CAUSE OF ACCIDENT VANCOUVER — A report from the British Columbia Coroners Service concludes that driver fatigue was a major fac-

FRACKING TO BE REGULATED YELLOWKNIFE — The government of the Northwest Territories (NWT) will start developing regulations that will set out filing requirements for projects involving hydraulic fracturing.

David Ramsey, Minister of Justice and Industry, Tourism and Investment, said on June 2 that the government had been working on the issue since 2012 and had already undertaken research into environmental best practices used by industry and regulators in other jurisdictions.

“Any regulations we do develop will be based on current science, recognized best practices and will consider all the views presented during consultations,” Ramsey said, adding that the government would consult with MLAs, the public, Aboriginal communities, industry and other stakeholders. The regulations, to be developed under the NWT Oil and Gas Operations Act, will provide clarity to decision makers, industry and the public about filing requirements.

Fracking has spurred worker safety concerns, particularly around the risk of exposure to silica. “We are all aware of the proposed hydraulic-fracturing activities in the Canol Shale and the often heated and polarized debate around the use of hydraulic fracturing as a technique to extract petroleum from certain kinds of rock formations,” Ramsay said, noting that the Canol Shale holds an estimated two to three billion barrels of oil.

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tor in a 2010 ambulance accident that claimed two lives.

On October 19 of that year, an ambulance went over a concrete barrier, west of Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, and plunged over a 33-metre-high cliff into a lake. The 59-year-old ambulance driver, Jo-Ann Fuller, drowned, while 65-yearold paramedic Ivan Polivka succumbed to massive trauma to the chest and head.

Coroner Lyn Blenkinsop’s report, released on May 21, says Fuller and Polivka had been off-duty for about five hours when the Victoria Communication Centre dispatched them at 1:36 a.m. to transfer a patient from a hospital in Tofino to another facility in Port Alberni. “[The] investigation found that [ambulance] crew members may work long hours with insufficient breaks for them to obtain adequate rest,” the report notes.

While an autopsy failed to disclose significant traumatic injury and did not identify any significant natural disease process to account for death, it did find external injuries around Fuller’s left eye and bruising that appeared to have been caused by a seatbelt. “The autopsy find-

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ings are considered to be consistent with drowning,” Blenkinsop writes. “Driver impairment due to fatigue is considered to be a contributing factor.”

Both WorkSafeBC and the British Columbia Ambulance Service (BCAS) investigated the accident. The BCAS’ internal review resulted in five recommendations regarding roadway barriers, seatbelt policies, the appropriate provision of escorts and awareness of the hazards of highway driving. It has since implemented all the recommendations.

The BCAS adds that BC Emergency Health Services (BCEHS) has implemented new policies regarding rest periods for paramedics and ambulance drivers following the incident. “These policies promote paramedics taking breaks when operationally possible, in order to reduce the mental or physical impairment from fatigue.”

The BCEHS is also working to change the scheduling information system to ensure that staff have adequate time away from work to rest and developing education programs for employees related to shift-work safety.

POLICE REVIEW FATALITY BURNABY — The death of a pipelayer in

a trench two years ago is under review by the RCMP, following an investigation

by WorkSafeBC. “We just got the file,” says John Buis, staff sergeant major with the RCMP’s Burnaby detachment. “We are reviewing it to see if there are any allegations of criminality.”

Jeff Caron, 28, an employee of Surrey-based J. Cote & Son Excavating Ltd., was helping to replace sewer lines in a 1.2-metre-deep excavation for the City of Burnaby on October 11, 2012, when a concrete wall cracked in two, fell onto him and pinned him against the bank of the trench. Caron was killed, while a second trench worker, Thomas Richer, was seriously injured.

WorkSafeBC’s investigation report, released last December, concludes that insufficient training, lack of hazard recognition, poor hazard communication and a weak safety-management system contributed to the incident. As well, the

pipe crew’s foreman, David Green, ignored Richer’s warnings that the worksite’s conditions were dangerous.

“J. Cote’s crew excavated directly adjacent to the concrete wall,” the report notes in its conclusions about the cause of the accident. “The removal of the soil mass in front of the concrete wall caused it to become unstable and fall, by allowing it to move outward and overturn.”

To date, WorkSafeBC has not imposed administrative penalties for the incident. But the agency issued six orders to J. Cote, three to the City of Burnaby and two to engineering company Earthbitat Engineering. WorkSafeBC charges that J. Cote had not established a safety program and failed to recognize or address the hazards when a worker had reported them.

A letter that J. Cote’s lawyer, Jonathan Tweedale, sent to CBC News on May 6, says the excavation company is in the process of appealing WorkSafeBC’s conclusions. J. Cote claims that it dug the trench as Earthbitat had advised them. J. Cote is also suing the City of Burnaby for the additional costs and delay following

the incident, according to court papers dated December 18, 2013.

Buis says criminal investigations of workplace fatalities by the RCMP are uncommon in Burnaby. “This is all relatively new to us, as we are getting this case from another provincial agency to review,” he notes. “We are taking a look at it, and as always, if there are any charges, it is brought forward to the Crown Counsel for review and approval.”

MAN CHARGED AFTER SHOOTING NANAIMO — Police in Nanaimo, British

Columbia have laid criminal charges against a local man in connection with an early morning shooting at the Western Forest Products sawmill in late April.

Constable Gary O’Brien, media relations officer with the Nanaimo RCMP detachment, reports that 47-year-old Kevin Addison was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. Addison was arrested and taken into custody on April 30, following a shooting that killed two mill

workers: 61-year-old Michael Lunn and 53-year-old Fred McEachern. Two other men were shot at the mill and suffered significant injuries, O’Brien says.

Nanaimo RCMP detachment commander superintendent Mark Fisher says police responded after receiving several 9-1-1 calls about shots being fired at the mill. “Early indications are that there may be a connection between the suspect and the company,” Fisher says, adding that four individuals sustained gunshot injuries.

Following the incident, Western Forest Products closed all of its mills and timberlands operations on Vancouver Island, out of respect for its colleagues.

Critical-incident stress counsellors were also brought in to work with employees.

Western president and chief executive officer Don Demens says the company is working closely with its colleagues at Local 1-1937 of the United Steelworkers (USW) to review the security of its workplace. “We will make any changes needed to ensure our colleagues are confident in the security of their work environment,” he adds.

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BEAR ATTACK CLAIMS EMPLOYEE FORT MCMURRAY — Alberta-based Suncor Energy is dealing with another fatality at its oilsands site near Fort McMurray, after a large, male black bear attacked and fatally wounded an instrument technician on May 7.

Alberta Fish and Wildlife (AFW), a division of Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development (ESRD), confirms that 36-year-old victim Lorna Weafer was pronounced dead at the scene. Mike Ewald, an AFW investigator, says Weafer was on her way back from the washroom when the bear struck. Her co-workers tried to scare the bear off with fire extinguishers, an air horn and a water cannon.

While the animal did retreat occasionally, it kept returning.

“This was definitely not a provoked attack,” Ewald says.

“It was just a predatory attack, and he was very persistent.”

Suncor’s emergency personnel responded, as did AFW and the local RCMP, before the Mounties put the bear down.

“We are very confident that the bear responsible was the one that was shot there onsite,” Ewald says.

“We are shocked by this very unusual incident, and there are no words to express the tragedy of this situation,” Suncor executive vice-president (upstream) Mark Little says. “All of us need to focus on personal safety, and I would urge everyone to be extremely vigilant in dealing with wildlife.”

A source from Suncor says the company began implementing critical-incident counselling services for employees

immediately after the incident. Suncor has also been providing bear-safety reminders to workers and, with AFW’s help, beefed up surveillance around the Fort McMurray worksite.

Brookes Merritt, spokesperson for Alberta Human Services in Edmonton, says oh&s authorities are investigating the incident as a standard workplace fatality. “Our investigation will basically look at everything that occurred leading up to, and everything that occurred during the incident,” including what injury-prevention or violence-prevention systems the employer has in place.

Alberta’s last death resulting from a black bear attack occurred in 1991. According to the ESRD, there have been only 14 recorded bear fatalities in the province historically.

Knowledge of bears and their behaviour is important in dealing with these situations, says Ewald, citing two main types of dangers: a predatory attack and a defensive one.

If the attack is defensive, the bear will make a lot of noise, pop its jaws and pound the ground to make its presence known. It is important to communicate to the bear that one is not a threat by talking to it, backing away slowly and not appearing big. But a bear launching a predatory attack does not want its potential prey to know that it is coming. In that case, protecting oneself with whatever means available and necessary, such as a bear spray, is the right approach.

— By Jeff Cottrill Operations at all mills, with the exception of the Nanaimo sawmill, recommenced on May 5.

Brian Butler, president of USW Local 1-1937, says the union and company will ensure that workers and affected families receive help through grief counselling or other means.

SUNCOR SEES FOURTH WORKPLACE FATALITY FORT MCMURRAY — A worker fatality at Suncor Energy in north-

ern Alberta is the fourth death at the company’s worksite since the beginning of the year.

On June 2, a 37-year-old employee of North American Construction Group (NACG) was performing maintenance work on a bulldozer at Suncor’s Steep Bank Millennium mine near Fort McMurray when he was struck in the head by a sump pan, says Brookes Merritt, spokesperson for Alberta Human Services in Edmonton. The worker was taken to Northern Lights Regional Health Centre, where he was pronounced dead.

The NACG says the company’s emergency-response personnel responded to the incident that morning and found the severely injured worker. The company is working with the appropriate authorities and will complete a full investigation.

COMPANY, SUPERVISOR FINED FORT MCMURRAY — Stony Valley Contracting Ltd. has been

fined $90,000, and a supervisor has been issued a $4,000 penalty in connection with a worker injury three years ago.

The fine was issued on May 12, after the firm pleaded guilty to failing to notify a safety inspector of the incident as soon

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as possible, the Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour reports. Supervisor Jeremy Worden had already been fined on January 9.

The incident took place on March 2, 2011, when a worker was seriously injured after his hand got caught between the running conveyor belt and a scraper while removing ice from the conveyor.

EX-MINER SENTENCED FOR FRAUD

lometres north of Sudbury, when the fire erupted inside another apartment on the second floor of the housing complex.

Belair brought her client to safety, but for unknown reasons, returned to the building where the fire continued to blaze. Those who knew the 33-year-old worker suspect that she was attempting to rescue the occupant in the unit where the fire had originated.

“As the person fled from the unit of

origin, the fire extended from the unit of origin into the hallway. When it moves into the hallway, the energy from the unit of origin is now in the hallway, and that is where it trapped the CAS worker,” reports Chris Williams, assistant deputy fire marshal of investigations.

Firefighters retrieved Belair, who was unconscious, on the top floor of the building. She received injuries that later contributed to her death.

WYNYARD — A former mine labourer

has been sentenced for defrauding the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) of $6,322.68, the WCB announced on May 29.

The WCB says the former claimant was sentenced on May 1, after pleading guilty to deceiving the board in order to get income replacement. He received a 15-month conditional sentence and was ordered to perform 75 hours of community service and to pay full restitution.

MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO CHARGES PRINCE ALBERT — A Prince Albert man has been fined $720 after pleading guilty to three oh&s counts.

The penalty was issued on May 12, after Chris Webb pleaded guilty to failing to provide and/or require a worker to use appropriate protective headwear, failing to ensure that a worker who could fall three metres or more used a fall-protection system, and failing to ensure that a ladder was secured against accidental movement during use.

The Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety in Regina says the conviction relates to an inspection at a Prince Albert worksite on August 25, 2011, when a safety officer observed a worker violating oh&s legislation while working on a roof.

.

SOCIAL WORKER KILLED IN FIRE SUDBURY — A community in northern On-

tario is mourning the loss of Children’s Aid worker Nicole Belair, who died on May 13 after succumbing to burn injuries from a building fire that had occurred on the previous day.

Belair, who worked for the Children’s Aid Society (CAS) of the Districts of Sudbury and Manitoulin, was on her way to the home of a client in Hanmer, 25 kiwww.ohscanada.com

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Williams reports that Belair’s injuries were not a function of the direct responsibilities of her job and no fire-code violations had contributed to the fire. “It is simply a tragic set of circumstances where one of the individuals who is not a resident of the building was trapped in a hallway on the second floor.”

Lisa McCaskell, senior health and safety officer with Ontario Public Service Employees Union, says it is still unclear if the incident could have been avoided, but suggests that generally speaking, it is important that formal and informal safety checks take place prior to home visits.

SEVERE INJURY PROMPTS PENALTY MISSISSAUGA — A company in Mississau-

ga, Ontario has been fined $50,000, following a worker injury.

On September 17, 2012, two workers employed by Action Trailer Sales were changing a trailer’s tires and working on opposite sides of the trailer to remove the bogie — the assembly that includes the tires, suspension, brake and axle system attached to the trailer box.

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One of the workers, thinking that the trailer was still supported on the jack, went partly under the trailer to free up a stuck slider lock pin, when the trailer came down and pinned the worker, causing critical head and facial injuries.

Action Trailer Sales was fined on May 13, after pleading guilty to failing to take the reasonable precaution of establishing and maintaining a safe procedure for changing a bogie on a trailer.

FOAM MANUFACTURER FINED TILLSONBURG — An Ontario-based manu-

facturer of foam seats for the automotive industry has been fined $155,000, after a worker was killed last year.

Johnson Controls Automotive Canada LP was fined on May 14, after pleading guilty to failing to ensure that temporarily elevated machinery, equipment or material under which a worker could pass or work was securely blocked to prevent the material from falling or moving.

On January 29, 2013, a worker was performing maintenance on a metal mould in the company’s plant when he

opened and raised the lid of the mould, held open by a J-shaped metal hook attached to a one-tonne-capacity overhead electric hoist. While the worker was performing work on the mould under the elevated lid, the hook broke in half and struck the worker on the head, fatally crushing him between the lid and lower section of the mould.

An investigation by the provincial labour ministry found that no blocking devices had been used to prevent the lid from closing, contrary to the Regulation for Industrial Establishments.

NURSE HURT IN HOSPITAL LONDON — A healthcare facility in London, Ontario has been fined $50,000, after a nurse was injured while attending to a patient.

St. Joseph’s Health Care London was fined on June 5, after pleading guilty to failing to provide adequate information, instruction and supervision to protect the health and safety of a worker.

On May 5, 2013, the nurse was administering medication to the patient

MOUNTIES TACKLE MENTAL HEALTH OTTAWA — The RCMP has developed a five-year mental

health strategy to improve the awareness and use of its existing policies, programs and services.

The strategy, announced on May 21, focuses on five key areas: promotion; education; prevention; early detection and intervention; and continuous improvement. It comprises three strategic goals: eliminate stigma associated with psychological health problems within the RCMP; take proactive steps to help employees maintain or improve psychological health; and continually improve the management and review of psychological health and safety programs and services.

“For our employees involved in operational policing, the reality is that it is a highly dangerous profession and exposes them to potentially stressful and traumatic situations,” says an RCMP statement.

A recent audit of long-term sick leave found that 38 per cent of off-duty members cited mental-health issues. “Police officers are expected to be tough, and traditionally, it was just part of the culture to not talk about how the job may be affecting you. There is now a greater acknowledgement that RCMP officers are only human.”

The RCMP is putting in place a new disability-management structure that will mandate and facilitate intervention within the first few days of an injury — psychological or physical. The organization already has some prevention activi-

at the Parkwood Hospital site when she lost balance and fell, fracturing her arm, Ontario’s Ministry of Labour reports. Her foot had become entangled in a cable attached to the bed-check equipment in place on the patient’s bed.

The ministry says the dangling cords, a known hazard in the facility, had been documented in the inspection records of the workplace joint health and safety committee. In this incident, the cord in question had not been secured by any means, even though hooks, clips or Velcro had been previously identified as methods of securing cords.

JURY MAKES RECOMMENDATIONS SAULT STE. MARIE — The union represent-

ing outside city workers in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario applauds a coroner jury’s recommendations regarding a workplace fatality.

City of Sault Ste. Marie worker James Vecchio, 34, was killed on April 16, 2009, when an 80-tonne Millennium Crane Rentals Ltd. mobile crane backed into a hole where Vecchio was performing sewage work.

Charges under Bill C-45’s criminal negligence causing death were filed

ties in place, including the mandatory Respectful Workplace course, which helps ensure employees have the knowledge necessary to contribute to a safe and respectful workplace, and the Workplace Reporting System for employees to report workplace issues if they are unsure of where to go or when established reporting methods are not appropriate.

As part of its second strategic goal to help employees maintain or improve psychological health, early detection and intervention are key.

“Research has shown that individuals with psychological distress or mild dysfunction have the ability to cope with their psychological problems — in the early stages — when they are equipped with the resources to do so,” the statement notes. “They achieve even more success in overcoming their psychological problems when they receive coaching and support from healthcare providers, employee-assistance services, family or peers.”

Lastly, the RCMP will conduct an annual management review process to measure its psychological health and safety performance. It will also design a psychological health and safety performance-monitoring system to measure the psychological health and safety of the organization, and conform to the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace standard.

— By Jason Contant

against Millennium owner David Selvers and mobile-crane operator Anthony Vanderloo, but withdrawn on March 21, 2011, after Crown prosecutors concluded that there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

Last year, the company was fined $70,000 after Ontario’s Ministry of Labour found that the crane was in a state of disrepair, with braking components that were not fully functional and parts of the braking system had broken and deteriorated. As well, the crane had only 25 per cent brake function in its four rear wheels and 31.25 per cent brake function in its four front wheels — defects that a competent worker should have noticed while inspecting the crane.

Following a two-week inquest that wrapped up in early May, the jury made nine recommendations: five to the city and two each to the provincial labour ministry and the Ministry of Transportation. Among others, the recommendations included drafting and implementing a bylaw that would require mobile-crane operators to provide an annual mechanical fitness certificate under the Highway Traffic Act before their operation would be allowed on city roadways, removing workers from any excavation site where workers are being positioned and revis-

ing the Occupational Health and Safety Act to ensure that workers have a minimum of two ways to enter and exit a worksite, where physically possible.

Paul Beauchamp, president of Local 3 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, says he is pleased that the jury accepted several of the union’s recommendations, including tightening rules and inspections concerning mobile cranes.

“We also pushed for mandatory carriage of air horns where heavy equipment is used, and the jury accepted that too.”

TRIBUNAL DISMISSES CASE TORONTO — The Human Rights Tribunal

of Ontario (HRTO) has dismissed a discrimination case against the province concerning the 2002 death of Ned Peart, a Jamaican migrant worker.

The deceased worker’s brother, Wilbert Peart, charged that the lack of an inquiry into his death was due to the Coroners Act discriminating against temporary foreign workers.

“It is a tough loss,” says Chris Ramsaroop, activist with Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW), who testified on behalf of Peart in the case.

According to the decision, 39-year-

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old Peart was working on a tobacco farm in Brant County, Ontario on August 22, 2002, when a 1,000-pound tobacco bin toppled onto him from a steel bin lift and crushed him. A police investigation determined that it had not been the fault of the employer or of defective equipment, but that Peart had not followed the safety training he had received.

J4MW lobbied for an inquest into Peart’s death and 16 other fatalities that had occurred from 1996 to 2002, but the chief coroner maintained that the Peart case did not meet the requirements for an inquest.

Wilbert Peart filed his suit against the provincial government in 2009, claiming that the Coroners Act was discriminatory in denying mandatory inquests into workplace deaths to migrant workers employed under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). Following six days of evidence in April of 2013 and the submission of additional information from Wilbert Peart, adjudicator Mark Hart of the HRTO dismissed the case on April 30 of this year.

“While I appreciate the vulnerabilities experienced by SAWP workers,” Hart wrote in his decision, “I cannot find that their exclusion from the mandatory inquest requirement under s. 10(5) of the Coroners Act results in substantive inequality for this group when the purposes and context of this provision are taken into account.”

Although Ramsaroop is disappointed by the final verdict, he approves of Hart’s concession that SAWP workers are “uniquely vulnerable” because their position makes it more difficult to challenge their employers regarding illness, injury or unfair work demands. “The case was also about highlighting the injustices faced by migrant workers, and there is a lot of information that came out during the tribunal process.”

UNION SETS UP DEFENCE FUND LAC-MÉGANTIC — The United Steelwork-

ers union (USW) has set up a legal defence fund for two workers charged with criminal negligence causing death in connection with the train derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec last July.

The Justice for USW Rail Workers Fund was established by the Syndicat des Métallos/USW on May 25 to support unionized workers Tom Harding and Richard Labrie.

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The move came two weeks after Quebec’s director of criminal and penal prosecutions laid charges under section 220(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada against Harding and Labrie.

Also charged were employer Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA) and company manager Jean Demaître.

Daniel Roy, the USW’s Quebec director, charges that the workers are being made scapegoats, while those “truly responsible,” such as former MMA owner and president Ed Burkhardt, are not being held accountable.

Roy further contends that federal deregulation, which allowed the one-person train crew to operate, was to blame.

“How was train safety ensured? Why was the authorization granted when MMA had accumulated a number of infractions and its maintenance left much to be desired?” he questions.

The derailment killed 47 people.

INSPECTIONS STEPPED UP SAINT JOHN — WorkSafeNB has stepped

up inspections of commercial and residential worksites as construction projects ramp up. To date, the provincial oh&s regulator has issued 37 orders to 23 employers, WorkSafeNB reports in a statement issued on June 4.

“Already this year, falls have resulted in serious injuries to several New Brunswick workers. Luckily, none of these falls were fatal,” the statement says. To prevent injuries from falls, WorkSafeNB reminds employers and supervisors to provide fall protection to employees who are required to carry out work at heights and to ensure that employees use it.

“We urge employers and their workers to first ensure the use of a guardrail or travel restraint, and if the first two options are not possible, fall-arrest when working from heights,” says Richard Blais, WorkSafeNB’s director of compliance and regulatory review.

RULING CALLS FOR EDUCATION HALIFAX — The Halifax Alehouse has

been directed to educate management and staff on racial profiling and cultural competencies in human rights, following a racial-discrimination incident four years ago.

In a decision delivered on June 3, Walter Thompson, chair of the Human

Rights Commission board of inquiry, found that Alehouse staff had discriminated against Dino Gilpin on February 20, 2010. “The root of the problem in Mr. Gilpin’s case was a certain ‘macho’, hard-nosed attitude, which, in the end, amounted to a lack of courtesy, an indifference to Mr. Gilpin,” Thompson wrote.

The prescribed training applies to managers, supervisors and any staff who have been working for the Alehouse for more than three years, including associated bars and facilities. The Alehouse has also been ordered to pay Gilpin $6,875 in damages.

EMPLOYERS GET REBATES HALIFAX — More than 1,200 employers

in Nova Scotia’s trucking and construction industries are receiving $1.45 million in rebates through the provincial workers’ compensation board’s (WCB) Practice Incentive Rebate Pilot Program.

The WCB of Nova Scotia made the announcement on May 15. The program, developed in partnership with the Nova Scotia Construction Safety Association and the Nova Scotia Trucking Safety Association, is funded by employers and provides rebates on workplace insurance premiums for businesses that have received either a Certificate of Recognition or a Safety Certified accreditation.

The program encourages employers to implement health-and-safety management systems to reduce workplace-injury risk. Julie Trites, spokesperson for the WCB, says the rebate program was launched in September of 2012. “The first payments, based on certifications in 2013, were made in April of 2014.”

The program can support rebates for all eligible businesses in those industries, and the funding amount may vary, depending on how many companies become certified in the program year. In total, the WCB reports that 987 firms in the construction industry have received about $1.2 million in rebates and 256 firms in the trucking industry have received about $240,000.

One of the companies is Eassons Transport in Kentville. Trevor Bent, the company’s human resources/risk manager, says the firm would use the rebate towards a new snow-removal system.

“By putting effective health and safety systems in place, these employers are demonstrating their commitment to providing safe work environments with less

PROVINCE TO PASS WHISTLEBLOWER LEGISLATION ST. JOHN’S — Newfoundland and Labrador is one step closer

to passing whistleblower legislation, after Bill 1 received its second reading in the House of Assembly on May 6.

Under Bill 1, An Act Respecting Public Interest Disclosure, the Office of the Citizens’ Representative (OCR) will be responsible for receiving and investigating disclosures of wrongdoing, the Office of Public Engagement says in a statement. The legislation, which allows employees to “disclose a serious and significant wrongdoing without fear or threat of reprisal,” will apply to employees of all government departments, boards, corporations, authorities and agencies, including other public bodies, such as school boards and regional health authorities. It is expected to be proclaimed on July 1.

“We are fulfilling [a] commitment to the people of the province by introducing whistleblower legislation for publicservice employees of the government of Newfoundland and Labrador,” says Steve Kent, Minister Responsible for the Office of Public Engagement. “This legislation ensures that employees who use the whistleblower legislation in good faith are protected from acts of reprisal,” Kent adds, noting that the act will feature an independent process for receiving and investigating complaints through the office, making the legislation unique among the provinces.

A backgrounder notes that unlike other provincial jurisdictions with whistleblower legislation, the Public Interest

risk of workplace injuries, less time lost due to injury and more engaged and productive workers that go home safely at the end of each shift,” WCB chief executive officer Stuart MacLean says.

DRILLING COMPANY FINED ST. JOHN’S — The Atlantic division of Cabo Drilling Corporation has been fined for an incident in 2013 at the Duck Pond Mine Site, located about 80 kilometres from Badger, Newfoundland.

A statement from Service NL, released on May 20, reports that Cabo pleaded guilty to two violations of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Occupational Health and Safety Act in Grand Falls-Windsor Provincial Court. The court sentenced the company to pay two fines of $20,000 each, plus an additional 15 per cent victim fine surcharge. Cabo was also ordered to contribute $10,000 to Service NL for public education.

According to Service NL, a drilling machine at the Duck Pond Mine Site caught fire last March, causing severe burns to the hands and face of the worker who was operating it. Following the incident, the oh&s division of Service NL

Disclosure and Whistleblower Protection Act establishes a single, independent disclosure process. The Newfoundland and Labrador Labour Relations Board will also have the power to hear complaints filed by employees, who believe that a reprisal or retaliation has been taken against them as a result of the disclosure process. As well, the board can award remedies, including reinstatement, for reprisals against whistleblowers.

One key aspect of the legislation is the requirement for the OCR to table an annual report in the House of Assembly, outlining the number of inquiries and disclosures received and the number acted on and not acted on. The report will also include the number of investigations commenced, the number of recommendations made and whether the department or public body has complied with the recommendations.

Newfoundland and Labrador will become the eighth jurisdiction — following Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, in addition to the federal government — to implement such legislation.

“The introduction of whistleblower legislation, which will provide a mechanism for the disclosure of wrongdoing in the public service and for the protection of employees who make disclosures from reprisals, is one of a number of ongoing measures taken by government to improve governance practices and openness,” the statement says.

— By Jason Contant

conducted an investigation that resulted in charges against the company.

Cabo was charged with failing to maintain a safe workplace and provide proper equipment, systems and tools that posed no risk to workers’ health and failing to provide information, instruction, training and supervision sufficient to keep workers safe. Six additional charges against the corporation were dropped as part of a plea agreement.

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DISPATCHES

Improve labour relations in construction: report

By Jeff Cottrill

A

lberta’s Ministry of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour has approved a series of recommendations in a report urging improvements to labour relations in the province’s construction industry.

The provincial government asked Edmonton labour lawyer Andrew Sims to investigate and review labour-relations issues in construction in the fall of 2012. Last November, Sims submitted his report, which includes six recommended approaches to providing long-term stability to labour relations in the sector. The government has accepted all six actions in Sims’ report, which are as follows: • Use model major-project language in collective agreements and arbitration in dispute resolutions for employment terms and conditions regarding major-project agreements; • Allow staff with the Labour Relations Board (LRB) to choose all-employee or multi-trade bargaining units when appropriate, with employees allowed to return to single-trade bargaining units; • Have the LRB address the premature certification of small work groups until the workforce reaches a significant size, unless bona fide commitments justify the certification; • Have the LRB examine whether to place major transmission-line work in the specialty-construction sector for collective-bargaining purposes; • Enact a new legislative provision requiring that a registration agreement binding a trade-union local also applies to the international union or affiliated locals; and • Conduct occasional stakeholder roundtables to discuss industry issues.

“This is for the purpose of maximizing our labour force, minimizing disruptions and giving large projects that span five, six, seven years the possibility of supply of labour without interruption,” says former minister Thomas Lukaszuk. “It was aimed to set very clear rules relevant to union certification.”

Compared to other Canadian provinces, Alberta has little labour disruption in its construction sector, proving the code to be effective and balanced, Lukaszuk adds. “But some updates needed to take place because of the influx of large projects in this province and shortage of labour.”

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Sims says his recommendations “will update these systems to reflect changes within the industry,” while maintaining the features that have made it successful.

Jeff Cottrill is editorial assistant of

ohs canada.

Federation demands tree planters be compensated

By Carmelle Wolfson

T

he B.C. Federation of Labour (BCFL) is pressing the provincial government to compensate African workers who were discriminated against and exposed to deplorable conditions at a tree-planting site in 2010.

The demand comes in response to a British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal ruling on May 23, which concluded that racism — and in one white woman’s case, sexism — had been at play in an employer’s mistreatment of tree-planting employees in Golden, British Columbia. The co-owners of Surrey-based Khaira Enterprises Ltd., Khalid Mahmood Bajwa and Hardilpreet Singh Sidhu, have been ordered to pay $10,000 to each of the 55 complainants, plus $1,000 for every month that each worker was employed.

The African workers named in the complaint had come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Guinea and Rwanda, many as refugees. The tribunal found that the discrimination in the camp had included Khaira withholding wages of African workers, while South Asian and Caucasian workers had been paid in full. Employees were also subject to harassment through racial slurs.

“From the perspective of a dispassionate reasonable black worker encountering similar circumstances, the circumstances were discriminatory,” tribunal member Norman Trerise notes in the decision. Trerise writes that the toilet facilities at the camp site, in which toilet paper was not provided to workers, was comparable to “conditions on the slave ships transporting slaves throughout ports on the Atlantic Ocean.”

Sarah Khan, a lawyer with the British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre (BCPIAC) who represented the workers, says “this is the most thorough analysis of anti-black discrimination as far as we are aware of in the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.”

Khan says the BCPIAC is also glad that the tribunal accepted the evidence furnished by witness Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard, professor of social work at Dalhousie University, regarding the “everydayness” of racism that the African tree planters experienced. “It sends a message that pretty large

damage awards can be issued against employers if they engage in this type of racism.”

Carmelle Wolfson is assistant editor of

ohs canada.

Mobile apps help employees manage chronic pain

By Jean Lian

N

owadays, there seems to be an app for everything.

For workers or patients struggling with chronic pain, a new smartphone app can help manage their conditions by monitoring pain, mood, physical activity, drug side effects and treatment compliance.

At the American Pain Society’s annual meeting held in Tampa, Florida from April 30 to May 1, Robert Jamison, Ph.D., professor of anesthesia and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and pain psychologist with Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, presented the results of his research on smartphone apps. Dr. Jamison found that Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy could significantly decrease pain levels, improve function and decrease costs compared to standard care.

A key feature of the pain-management app is tracking patients’ pain daily through five questions about their pain, activity interference, sleep, mood and overall status on a scale of 1 to 10. Their responses are then compared with baseline ratings. If pain ratings increase significantly from baseline, the patient gets an immediate response that a pain specialist has been contacted. “The pain-management smartphone app can deliver non-pharmacological, cognitive behavioral treatment, as well as prompt patients to stay active, comply with therapy and develop pain-coping skills,” Dr. Jamison says.

The smartphone data can be summarized and transmitted daily into the patient’s electronic medical record. Dr. Jamison reports that the average response rate to text messages sent to pain patients is 70 to 90 per cent and that high responders showed improved pain levels.

Apart from promoting communication, distraction, information sharing and self-expression, “online networks decrease feelings of withdrawn behavior and instill a greater willingness to return for treatment,” Dr. Jamison says. Electronic diaries maintained by patients are more effective than paper diaries for evaluating pain levels, daily activities, treatment compliance and mood, he adds.

Meanwhile, the University of Alberta has developed a new approach to help injured workers who are fit to return to their jobs without being subjected to painful tests that can trigger pain flare-ups. During a randomized controlled trial,

103 participants with chronic musculoskeletal conditions at a rehabilitation facility underwent performance-based evaluation, while 100 were assessed through an interview. Results, published online in the May issue of Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, show that assessing functional ability through an interview may be as clinically useful as a physical evaluation and more cost-effective.

Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

Clear focus, not fear, key to measuring safety

By Jason Contant

A

n executive team that has a clear, precise focus is essential to effective safety measurements. That was the message delivered in a post-session interview at the Petroleum Safety Conference in Banff, Alberta on May 7.

Shawn Galloway, president and chief operating officer with ProAct Safety in The Woodlands, Texas, says the process starts with the executive team discovering what they want workers to know. “The executive team has to have alignment on where they are trying to go, what it is going to look like when they get there, what steps they are going to need to take and who is responsible for what,” he says. “The next thing they need to determine is, ‘what do we want people to do?’ and then, ‘how well-aligned are our measurement systems and capabilities to give us insight into how we are enhancing knowledge, changing beliefs and changing behaviours?’”

Galloway cites the following elements that can point a company in the right direction when measuring workplace safety: forming a common understanding of safety; motivating the passion for safety excellence; setting clear expectations; ensuring accountability; reinforcing right practices; having an appreciation for risk and vulnerability; communicating right practices; and building trust.

Galloway also warns of the hazards of “measurement dysfunction.” When organizations measure to find fault and hold people accountable, it can create demotivation. A common mistake that well-intended organizations make is allowing the belief that safety means not getting hurt or going home without an injury to persist in companies.

He cites an interview on safety measurement and feedback with a worker who was about to retire from her company after 30 years of service.

“The only time they have ever talked to me about safety is when I have done something wrong,” the employee said, according to Galloway. “Just once before I retire, I wish they’d tell me when I have done something right.”

Jason Contant is editor of

pipeline.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada www.ohscanada.com

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CLAIM SUPPRESSION

Under

th

When longtime retail employee Karen chased down a brazen shoplifter in December of expose an illegal practice taking place across Manitoba and very likely across the country.

The practice — commonly known as claim suppression — refers to employers’ concealment of or failure to report workplace injuries The practice is widespread enough that the WCB of Manitoba commissioned an independent research report last May to examine the incidence of claim suppression.

The findings, released on March 28, found “significant” issues with employers misreporting, under-claiming and suppressing work-related injury claims to keep premiums in check.

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t

to the workers’ compensation board (WCB).

pe ar

2012, she never dreamed that her story would

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C

e

BY KELLY PUTTER

IMAGE: JOHN BOWDREN, ILLUSTRATION SOURCE

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n that chilly afternoon in December, the only concern that Karen (who requested that her last name be withheld for fear of reprisal) had was catching the thief and his female accomplice as they attempted to steal a 40-inch television. Karen confronted the pair as they loaded the television onto a van in the parking lot of the supermarket, where she worked as a customer service representative.

Threatened by her line of questioning, the pair started yelling at her and pushed her around, knocking her to the ground before making off with their heist worth $500.

Karen sustained a swollen lip, bruising and soreness. Physical injuries aside, she was also at the receiving end of blatant employer intimidation when her assistant manager suggested that it would be in her best interest not to file an injury claim with the WCB. Once the store manager got wind of the incident, he requested a meeting with Karen. Worried about the outcome, she requested a union steward to accompany her to the meeting. The store manager proceeded to berate Karen for violating store policy by following the customer outside and threatened that if she filed a WCB claim for her injuries, she could lose her job.

“They didn’t think they were violating the law, and they didn’t care to hide it in front of one of our stewards,” says Winnipeg-based Rob Hilliard, a WCB advocate with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 832, which represents about 15,000 workers in Manitoba. “I have to emphasize this is not a rare problem. It is a problem that is growing. My experience is that every year, it is worse than the year before.”

“We have a system that rewards people if they find ways to have claims not reported.”

LONG TIME COMING For many years, Manitoba’s labour movement has been highlighting the issue of claim suppression — a euphemism for employers gaming the system. In response to pressure from the province’s labour movement, the WCB of Manitoba has been taking a closer look at how it conducts its business by commissioning two reviews within the past year, both addressing claim suppression.

The first report, The Fair Compensation Review by Paul Petrie, an expert in workers’ compensation systems, looks at the effect that the WCB’s rate-assessment model has on fair compensation for workers and equitable assessments for employers. The report, submitted to the Minister of Family Services and Labour last January, addresses ways to encourage employers to embrace effective injury-prevention programs, while targeting the practice of claim suppression.

In March, the WCB of Manitoba released its second report, Claim Suppression in the Manitoba Workers’ Compensation System: Research Report, which gives credence to suspicions that some employers in the province suppress injury claims. The report notes that injury-claim suppression is tricky to pinpoint, because employers try to hide claims from 24

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the start. It reveals that six per cent of workplace injuries, representing about 1,000 workers yearly, are not reported due to overt claim-suppression tactics by employers. This type of suppression is especially malicious, as employers resort to threatening and bullying employees to deter them from filing time-loss claims or coerce them to withdraw such claims after they have been filed.

The report also details incidents of soft claim suppression at nearly 19 per cent, or 3,000 cases per year. This occurs when an employer continues to pay wages to an injured worker who is not working due to a job-related injury. Misreporting, which is reporting lost-time injuries as injuries for which no time was lost, accounts for an estimated 14 per cent of claims. The findings also indicate a significant amount of under-claiming of benefits and that more than 30 per cent of workers who suffered a work-related injury requiring more than five days of lost time may not have claimed lost earning benefits.

As a result of the review, the WCB of Manitoba has launched a multi-pronged education and awareness campaign to inform employers and employees about its workers’ compensation system — an initiative that could prove to be a rather steep learning curve.

“We are definitely concerned. That is why we are working hard and doing a robust awareness campaign this year,” says Warren Preece, director of communications with the WCB of Manitoba in Winnipeg. “We can make sure employers who are deliberately flouting the rules get punished and employers who are trying to learn the system get supported, and we can make sure employers and workers who don’t know about us are informed.”

However, identifying the black sheep among the herd can be a daunting task. “It is quite difficult to get a worker, a witness and everyone tied up tight enough to actually go and levy a penalty” against an offending employer, Preece says.

The WCB of Manitoba is engaging in public consultations to get feedback from stakeholders regarding its rate model.

Improvements to the WCB of Manitoba, earmarked for this year, will target the organization’s compliance framework and are expected to include the following measures: • Hiring a director of compliance; • Allocating resources to the new compliance department; • Identifying workers and employers who do not comply; • Educating workers; • Issuing fines to employers; and • Increasing the current administrative penalty.

UNINTENDED OUTCOMES Labour leaders charge that the WCB of Manitoba runs a flawed system that does the opposite of what it was mandated to do, which is to prevent accidents and injuries in the workplace and help injured workers. Instead, the current rate model operates on an incentive system based on the number of claims submitted: the fewer claims, the cheaper the rate.

Consequently, a segment of employers

suppress claims, even though the practice is illegal. Some do so through direct threats and coercion, while others adopt a lighter touch by offering gift cards and free pizza lunches to their staff if they meet established time periods in which no time is lost due to workplace injuries.

“Claim suppression is not a good culture to create, because it impacts workers who truly need time off and assistance, and they are more reluctant to seek medical treatment,” says Gail Cumming, an Edmonton-based consultant with Adorn Consulting Inc. Suppressing injury claims has adverse repercussions on both injured workers and workplaces. A worker might experience a seemingly innocuous injury that has a delayed side effect, but if the initial injury was never reported, he or she runs the risk of not being eligible for compensation if the injury worsens and becomes critical.

Cumming notes that seasonal migrant workers and those in temporary job placements are particularly affected. “If they are not healed by the time they left that employer, another employer is going to be having to deal with a claim,” she says. If a worker has previously sustained an injury that was not attended to due to the failure to report, that increases the risk of that worker suffering another injury down the road.

As well, an unreported injury means that the underlying cause that triggered the incident resulting in the injury was never addressed and rectified, thereby putting other employees at risk. Finally, claim suppression is not fair to employers who play by the rules, but end up paying more than those who beat the system do.

UNDER SCRUTINY The WCB of Manitoba has come under fire for not once fining an employer for claim suppression. At $450 for an administrative penalty, the amount is hardly a deterrent, says Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour (MFL) in Winnipeg. Rebeck believes that education may help fix the system. But before that can happen, changes need to be made to the WCB’s existing rate model, which encourages employers to sweep injury claims under the rug.

“It is not a matter of tweaking enforcement and upping fines; it is a matter of dealing with the root cause,” Rebeck says, adding that increasing penalties and issuing fines do not address the motivators behind claim suppression. “And the root cause is, we have a system that rewards people if they find ways to have claims not reported, and that is not right.”

Instead of the current claims-experience rate model that has been in place since 2001, Rebeck envisions a comprehensive workplace-injury prevention model, in which employers would be subject to periodic audits that would indicate whether employers have invested the time, effort and money into making their workplaces safe. He thinks that the historic no-fault concept of workers’ compensation is being compromised by employers and third-party claims administrators, many of whom are hired to challenge workers’ injury claims.

“When you get this kind of overly aggressive claims management, either directly by employers or third-party disability firms, it has a chilling effect on the workforce,” says John Doyle, research and communications manager with the MFL.

The federation views these claim challenges — subtle or aggressive — as a form of claim suppression that attempts to dissuade workers from doing what they are legally entitled to do.

Doyle observes that over the past five to 10 years, the province has seen an emergence of third-party claim administrators.

Cumming observes a similar trend. “The employers hire because they do not want the claims to raise employer cost or time loss,” she says.

“Workers hire these administrators because they do not trust the WCB and the employers to do the best thing for them.”

And that has to do primarily with managing the financial fallout stemming from workplace incidents. Preece reports that the WCB has nine different rate categories based on the level of risk. The average Manitoba employer currently pays $1.50 in premiums for every $100 in wages spent. For employers with a minimal risk rating, “you can pay as low as 14 cents for $100 payroll,” Preece says.

At the other end of the risk spectrum, an employer hit with many workplace injuries and accidents could pay as much as $36 for every $100 in payroll. High-risk employers include those in the logging and window-cleaning sectors. Mediumrisk employers tend to be in health services and wholesale food products, while office jobs are pegged as low-risk.

THE PETRIE REPORT The rate model is the topic of Petrie’s report, which concludes that the Assessment Rate Model — focused primarily on claims cost — provided a strong incentive for employers to control those costs wherever possible. By comparison, he found little persuasive evidence that the Assessment Rate Model provided a substantial direct incentive to develop and implement effective safety programs.

In 2012, there were 30,000 workplace injuries in Manitoba. But worker advocates believe that the number — high as it is — does not accurately reflect workplace injuries in the province, the number of which is likely higher, thanks to claim suppression.

“The issue exists because some employers are always looking for ways to beat the system, and it is a way to keep costs down and exercise more control over their employees,” says Winnipeg-based Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black chair in labour issues with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ Manitoba office.

While Petrie’s report does not go as far as recommending that the WCB of Manitoba move away from its current rate model, Fernandez points to one of the report’s 27 recommendations as the most significant in terms of circumventing claim suppression: the first two weeks of any time-loss claim should be assigned to the employer’s industry sector and funded collectively by that sector out of the accident fund.

Fernandez believes that the move would prevent claim suppression by small- and medium-sized firms that do not have the resources to invest in alternate-duty programs. He also thinks that this would help deter less conscientious employers from riding at the expense of those that play by the www.ohscanada.com

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rules and protect small employers from big rate hikes.

Curtis Forbes, a WCB consultant for employers with BCL Consulting Group Inc. in Edmonton, thinks that the solution is to have employers pay for lost time between three and five days after a worker is injured without the incident affecting their insurance rates. “It would be better for the system if the guy who cut his hand could go home and rest for a day. With this pressure to not have time-loss claims, every employer is forced to get the guy modified work immediately, and they are dreaming up kinds of modified work.”

He believes that this will diminish claim suppression by employers, who want to keep their records clean. “I think most employers would be happy with that, as they could go ahead and have a time-loss claim,” suggests Forbes, a former manager at Alberta’s WCB. PARTNERS IN CRIME Canada’s workers’ compensation system began in 1913, when Ontario judge, politician and lawyer Justice William Meredith, who headed the Ontario Royal Commission, studied the issue and submitted the Meredith report. It proposed a historic trade-off, in which workers gave up the right to sue

their employers for a guaranteed protection from loss of income, regardless of fault.

The report led to the proclamation of Canada’s first Workers Compensation Act in Ontario, based on the five Meredith Principles of no-fault compensation, collective liability (all employers share the total cost of the compensation system), security of payment (a fund that guarantees compensation will be available for injured workers when they need it), exclusive jurisdiction (all compensation claims are directed solely to the compensation board) and an independent board (which is autonomous and financially independent of government or any special-interest group).

But the workers’ compensation system has since turned 100 years old. Forbes thinks that it is not designed to handle the types of injury claims being made today. “When the WCB started, they were covering miners and loggers. Accidents used to be a broken leg, a cut — something significant and something physical. Now, you see a grey zone,” he says, citing workplace aggravation of a pre-existing condition. Forbes says he has seen many workers in their 50s with rotator-cuff tears report that they had been sore for a few weeks, and their

Hide and Seek Claim suppression comes in various permutations when employers engage in any of the following actions: • Discourage or blatantly prevent injured workers from filing workers’ compensation claims; • Pressure injured workers to return to work before they have fully recovered; • Punish workers for reporting injuries;

• F ight workers’ compensation board (WCB) claims by setting up a workplace culture hostile to injured workers; • Reward employees with gifts and bonuses for not reporting injuries; and • Encourage injured workers to accept cheaper and less comprehensive private insurance compensation rather than going through the WCB.

Types and prevalence of claim-suppression identified in Claim Suppression in the Manitoba Workers’ Compensation System: Type of under-reporting

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Definition

Percentage of claim- Annual number of suppression activity claims affected

Overt Claim Suppression

When an employer uses threats or coercion to influence a worker not to file a claim or withdraw a claim once filed.

Estimated at 6%

Approximately 1,000

Soft Claim Suppression

When an employer continues to pay the worker his or her regular wage, once he or she has had a workplace injury and is missing work.

Soft claim suppression may occur whether or not employers are aware of their reporting responsibilities under the Workers Compensation Act.

Estimated at 18.8%

Approximately 3,000

Misreporting

When an employer reports a time-loss claim as a no-time-loss claim. This is also known as cost suppression.

Estimated at 14%

Approximately 1,400

Under-Claiming

When workers choose not to pursue a claim for a workplace injury or illness with the WCB.

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Unclear. Likely a significant factor.

doctors then told them that they needed surgery.

Diana Ludwick, occupational health nurse with the MFL’s occupational health centre in Winnipeg, says workers in the food-processing sector are often discouraged to report job-related injuries.

“Within food-processing plants, I hear some workers — as many as half of the workers on any given day — are working in considerable pain,” Ludwick says, with many citing fast line speeds as a factor. “Workers are often instructed to not go to a doctor for five days and told to go back to work.” If they are in too much pain, she says they are often reassigned to lighter duties and not given the opportunity to file a claim.

In high-risk industries like construction, claim suppression is further exacerbated by online companies, such as ISNetworld and Contractor Qualification Network, which prequalify firms to bid on large jobs. These firms connect hiring clients with contractors rated safe and reliable by a point system. As such, a company’s safety record can make or break its approval rating and jeopardize the chances of a firm landing a project. “If you have a score below a certain threshold, they kick you out and you don’t get to bid,” Forbes says.

As an employer consultant, Forbes adds that he has handled numerous employers who were anxious about WCB claims and feared losing out on bids. “I had one employer tell me he would rather pay three times the WCB premium if it meant losing his time-loss claim, because he can’t bid on millions of dollars of work because of that one claim.”

But employers are not the only ones guilty of suppressing claims. Forbes points out that workers themselves are also partners in crime, especially in the construction sector, in which it is apparently not uncommon for employees to smoke marijuana. Many workers fear seeking first aid following an injury, because employers require mandatory urine tests, which will reveal that they have been smoking marijuana. “So they learn very quickly not to say anything. The urine test is getting to be quite common,” Forbes suggests.

Claim suppression is especially difficult for vulnerable workers — which include young workers, newcomers to Canada, Aboriginal workers and temporary foreign workers — who often do not know or understand their rights.

FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH Winnipeg’s Tim Cashion was working for a well-established temporary employment agency in 2011, when he suffered severe burns to his left foot after spending the better part of an afternoon cleaning caustic soda drums at a multi-national chemical company. Cashion says he received no training or direction regarding the corrosive chemical, which ate through his steel-toed work boot, sock and skin.

The 45-year-old did not report his injury for fear of reprisal from the job-placement agency and his co-workers.

Cashion would work at the Winnipeg chemical manufacturer for another three months. Although he walked with a noticeable limp after his injury, no one ever asked him about it.

As an unskilled, temporary labourer, Cashion felt especially vulnerable during the time when he was injured, since he believed that he had no rights and felt very much alone.

“You are taking a hell of a chance thinking you are going to reform the temporary-worker industry,” Cashion says.

“That is not a good idea for your employability. Besides, I did not have any particular interest in becoming the Joan of Arc for Manitoba’s temporary workers.”

But incidents of claim suppression at the chemical plant were common, whether that involved not reporting moderate injuries to the WCB or rewarding workers for having no lost-time claims within a certain period of time, he suggests.

“As a celebration of a certain time period of no injuries, we were given steaks at lunch,” Cashion recalls. “I could not believe how excited everyone was. This is a common worksite trick. What shocked me was the psychological impact these low-expense company gestures had on employees. By that point, I could afford to buy my own steak.”

Only time will tell whether WCBs in other provinces will follow in Manitoba’s footsteps of reviewing its experiencerating system. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board in Ontario, which adopts a similar rate-experience model to Manitoba, commissioned an independent study last April.

The report found that “the most important conclusion to be drawn from the research is that claim suppression appears to be a real problem. It is unlikely that claim suppression is restricted to a small number of anecdotal cases.”

Meanwhile, Manitoba’s NDP government is cracking down on employers who suppress claims. In late April, the government introduced amendments to the Workers Compensation Act (Bill 65) to broaden worker protection by increasing penalties to employers who suppress claims.

Maximum fines will increase from $7,500 to $50,000. The bill also gets tough on employers by requiring those who take “discriminatory action” against a worker to prove that the action was not related to the worker making a claim.

“We know from WCB research that claim suppression is happening far too often, to far too many workers,” Manitoba’s Labour and Immigration Minister Erna Braun says. Braun also announced new measures to boost workplace safety, including a new mobile unit for workplace health and safety officers, a new serious-injury support worker position in the Worker Advisor Office and Manitoba’s first annual leadership conference for safety and health committees, scheduled to take place in September.

Preece says the findings from the report will help the board analyze claim behaviour and review how it can intervene proactively. “We are focusing on overt claim suppression, because that is where a worker has to use their sick time or vacation,” he says. “We want to make sure that if you are hurt at work, you are not forced to go without pay.”

Over the past five to 10 years, the province has seen an emergence of third-party claim administrators.

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

Kelly Putter is a writer in Beamsville, Ontario. www.ohscanada.com

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GoEast PIPELINES

BY WILLIAM M. GLENN

“We look at pipelines as energy highways — similar to railways and truck routes.”

F

orget Keystone XL. Forget Northern Gateway. Forget Line 9. This is the big one.

According to documents filed this March with the National Energy Board (NEB), TransCanada’s proposed Energy East Pipeline project will stretch 4,600 kilometres, cross six provinces from Alberta to New Brunswick, cost $12 billion to build, carry up to 1.1 million barrels of crude oil per day and incorporate four new tank farms, 72 pump stations and two major marine terminals.

Once completed, the path of the Energy East Pipeline will be four times longer than Northern Gateway’s twisting route through the Rockies to the Pacific. It will carry more than three-and-a-half times the oil of the recently approved Line 9 reverse-flow project. And it will cost more than twice as much as the contentious Keystone XL extension to Nebraska, making Energy East one of the largest infrastructure projects in Canadian history.

t SAFETY IN NUMBERS

“Energy East will let Canadian [oil] producers expand their market, which will lead to jobs, energy security and government revenues across the country,” says TransCanada spokesperson Davis Sheremata in Calgary. “There is strong market support for a pipeline with approximately 900,000 barrels per day of firm, long-term contracts to transport crude oil from Western Canada to eastern Canadian refineries and export terminals.”

While final route details will not be settled until the project’s environmental site evaluation and public consultation sessions are concluded, the pipeline will run from a new batching and storage facility at Hardisty in Alberta, southeast to the Alberta-Saskatchewan border and then straight east across the prairies, passing just south of Regina and on past Winnipeg. After crossing the Manitoba-Ontario border, the route cuts a wide arc around the Great Lakes and through northern Ontario to Mattawa and then veers south, skirting

Over the last four years, there have been only nine serious injuries reported during the construction, operation or decommissioning of pipelines regulated by the National Energy Board (NEB).

One worker suffered serious burns to his hands and face during a flash fire, and another was burned when gas ignited while a pipe was being welded, information from the NEB notes. Other injuries include three broken legs — one when a worker was struck by a side-boom counterweight and two more when metal objects fell during separate welding incidents — as well as a broken arm. Lastly, one worker was overcome by hydrogen sulphide gas, another knocked unconscious by a falling tree and a third seriously injured in a car accident.

Since 2000, there have been six fatalities — half of which occurred in 2011: a contractor was killed after being pinned between two vehicles; one worker was caught between two pieces of construction equipment; and a third was killed when a lawnmower overturned on an embankment. In 2013, one sub-contractor was killed in a single-vehicle rollover.

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“From a statistical perspective and compared to other industrial activities, we are a very, very safe industry.” the Ontario-Quebec border to Morrisburg, Ontario on the St. Lawrence River. It follows the river northeast to a new marine terminal at Cacouna, Quebec on the south shore of the river’s gulf, before cutting back southeast through New Brunswick to the Canaport Energy East marine terminal near St. John on the Bay of Fundy.

During construction, some 2,997 km of existing natural-gas pipeline will be converted to shipping crude oil and 1,518 km of new transmission pipeline will be built, as well as another 100 km of laterals and terminal interconnections.

TransCanada expects to proceed with the necessary regulatory applications to construct and operate the pipeline and terminal facilities in mid-2014, Sheremeta says. Energy East is anticipated to be in service by 2018 for deliveries in Quebec and by late 2018 for deliveries to New Brunswick.

TransCanada estimates that 2,300 full-time jobs will be created during planning and development, including those in environmental and engineering studies, survey services, helicopter support and specialized consulting activities. Construction will require another 7,700 full-time workers — including welders, mechanics, pipefitters, heavy-equipment operators, electricians, truckers, safety coordinators and engineers. Once completed, some 1,000 full-time staff will be required to keep the pipeline operating efficiently and safely.

“An analysis conducted by Deloitte & Touche LLP estimates that Energy East will generate $35 billion in additional gross domestic product for Canada during six years of development and construction and over 40 years of operation,” Sheremata says. “Deloitte also found that Energy East will generate an additional $10 billion in tax revenues for all levels of government over the life of the project.”

MAKING THE CASE “We look at pipelines as energy highways — similar to railways and truck routes — that deliver oil and gas from producing regions to consuming regions,” says Philippe Reicher, vice-president of external relations with the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA) in Calgary. Its members, which include all the country’s major pipeline companies, transport 97 per cent of Canada’s natural gas and onshore crude oil to markets in Canada and the United States.

“It will take multiple pipeline projects to multiple destinations to move production from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, including the oil sands, to market,” Reicher says. Together with the southern and western routes, the eastern pipeline projects are integral parts of Canada’s ongoing infrastructure development.

Because these operations are essentially national in scope, the federal government has taken the lead in their regulation.

The design, construction and operation of pipelines must comply with the Onshore Pipeline Regulations (SOR/99-294), 30

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under the National Energy Board Act, as well as a number of CSA Group standards referenced in the regulations.

And while employees in most other industries are covered by provincial or territorial occupational health and safety regulations, pipeline workers are subject to the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (SOR/86-304) under the Canada Labour Code Part II. To track the safety of its members’ operations, CEPA compiles key performance data on “significant failure incidents”, defined as spills of more than 50 (U.S.) barrels of product, spontaneous fires or accidents involving serious injury or death. “Over the last 10 years, the industry has been averaging just 3.5 significant failure incidents a year, and that number is going down,” Reicher reports. “Last year, there were none reported by any of our member companies.”

Occupational hazards, including long-distance driving, confined-space entry, welding, working with heavy equipment, flash fires and spill response, might be expected to exact a serious toll every year. “But from a statistical perspective and compared to other industrial activities, we are a very, very safe industry,” Reicher claims.

Despite the encouraging numbers, CEPA’s members are always looking to improve performance. “Pipeline companies are developing and adopting new technologies and sharing best practices in a collaborative effort to achieve zero incidents,” Reicher says.

For example, in November of 2013, CEPA members signed a Mutual Emergency Assistance Agreement, replacing a former ad hoc arrangement with a formal commitment to share resources, equipment and personnel in the event of a spill or other emergency. The agreement removes any legal barriers that can sometimes delay emergency-response efforts.

SAFETY FIRST The primary responsibility for regulating the pipeline sector — from approvals to operations to safety — falls squarely on the energy board.

“The NEB is an independent regulator, expert tribunal and quasi-judicial body with the capacity and expertise to look at projects and determine whether they are in the public interest and should go forward,” says board spokesperson Whitney Punchak in Calgary. “We are also a life-cycle regulator. We regulate energy projects while they are still on the drawing board, while they are under construction and in operation and until they are eventually abandoned.”

The NEB is also responsible for ensuring that companies meet federal regulations related to the safety of employees, the public and the environment. According to section 47 of the Onshore Pipeline Regulations, a company must “develop, implement and maintain a safety-management program that anticipates, prevents, manages and mitigates potentially dan-

gerous conditions [during] construction, operation, maintenance, abandonment and emergency situations.” This requires systematic, comprehensive and proactive processes to identify hazards, train workers, communicate and document risks and evaluate progress.

Through a long-standing agreement with Employment and Social Development Canada, a number of NEB staff members have been designated as health and safety officers under the Canada Labour Code and/or safety officers under the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act, which covers production and drilling in Northern Canada. These staff are tasked with overseeing the health and safety of pipeline field personnel during construction site and facility inspections.

“Our number one priority is public and environmental safety,” Punchak says, “and that definitely includes worker safety. For any [new project] application, we look at the company’s management system, how they respond to emergency situations and whether their safety and compliance methods are on a par with our standards. Any discrepancies will be noted immediately and must be corrected.”

AUDITING SAFETY Each major pipeline company is also subject to a comprehensive audit — in addition to all the inspections, emergency-response tests and face-to-face meetings that the NEB regularly conducts — every five years. TransCanada was the subject last year; Enbridge is under the microscope this year.

It is a complex undertaking. “I have anywhere between 85 and 90 experts — inspectors, investigators, auditors, engineers and safety officers — working on these major audits,” estimates Patrick Smyth, the NEB’s business leader of operations, who is accountable for the audit process. Each audit examines the six primary components of a company’s management system: safety; environmental protection; integrity; pipeline crossings and public awareness; emergency management; and security.

“We look at the company’s documentation on, for example, its hazard-identification program, review some sample reports and determine if there are any problems,” Smyth says.

“Then we go out in the field to validate what is really happening and ensure that the inspections and assessments are being done, the safety meetings and toolbox chats are being held.”

At the end of each inspection, there is a “close-out” meeting to discuss any concerns, so that the company has a chance to close that compliance gap immediately, Smyth adds. And if the NEB inspectors or officers discover an immediate or imminent threat to human health or the environment, they have an array of regulatory tools at their disposal and can require a company to perform tests, undertake corrective measures or even suspend activities at a worksite until the hazardous or detrimental situation has been remedied.

In February of 2014, the NEB released the audit results of TransCanada’s Integrity Management Program, which sets out the tools, technologies and actions used to ensure that its pipelines are safe and remain that way over time. The audit showed that while the company identified the majority of the hazards and risks, including the most significant ones, it was “non-compliant” in the following areas: hazard identification; risk assessment and control; operational control in upset or abnormal operating conditions; inspection, measurement and monitoring; and management review.

Once the final audit was posted on the NEB website, the company had 30 days to draft and submit a corrective plan that lay out the actions it would take and the timing of those actions to correct any deficiencies.

It is a cooperative process designed to improve safety. “It is safe to say that our assessment has not found any immediate hazards that must be addressed,” Smyth says. “A program may be fairly sophisticated, but not entirely implemented, so our staff will follow up on all the deadlines in the corrective plan to ensure all deficiencies are completely corrected.”

On April 24, the NEB released its final audit reports on TransCanada’s Safety Management, Emergency Management, Environmental Protection, Third Party Crossings and Public Awareness programs. The safety audit showed that the company had implemented a program to manage potential safety incidents and that its personnel are appropriately informed of and trained in safety practices and procedures.

But a number of “non-compliant findings” were identified, including gaps in its documentation and “a lack of document-

WELL-OILED MACHINE TransCanada has developed a contractor safety-management process that requires all contractors to be pre-qualified before doing any work for the company. Prospective contractors are also sent the TransCanada occupational health and safety specifications for prime/general contractors as part of the bid package. These specifications become part of any contract issued. Finally, the contractor must develop a project- or site-specific health and safety program.

“The Energy East safety team takes a collaborative approach when working with its prime contractors to ensure the health and safety of all workers on the project,” says TransCanada spokesperson Davis Sheremata.

“If there are any questions regarding a specific procedure or program, the safety team and the prime contractor will work together to develop a practicable, safe approach to doing the work that will not compromise the health and safety of people,” Sheremata adds.

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STEP BY STEP According to a detailed summary of its pipeline integrity program, TransCanada says it has invested an average of $900 million in proactive inspection and maintenance programs over the past three years. In addition, Energy East will take the following steps to minimize the chances of a pipeline leak and to detect any leaks quickly: • TransCanada inspectors will be present at the mills to ensure that the pipe is manufactured and coated according to company standards and federal regulations; • Proven external corrosion-prevention technology will be implemented, including a fusion-bonded epoxy coating and cathodic protection system; • Each weld made during pipeline construction will be examined with radiographic or ultrasonic technology to ensure integrity; • Before the pipeline is put into service, its integrity will

ed, established and implemented processes” required under the NEB Onshore Pipeline Regulations, amended last March.

THE NEXT STAGE TransCanada is expected to file its comprehensive application for the Energy East project, together with the supporting studies and other evidence about the project’s effects on the environment and public safety, sometime in the third quarter of 2014. The NEB will then review the application for completeness and, if satisfied, issue a hearing order.

That is when the clock starts ticking. According to the service standards in the National Energy Board Act, once a proponent’s application has been judged complete, the NEB has 15 months to undertake its own assessment, hold any hearings, look at the information submitted by proponents, intervenors or other commenters and then prepare and issue its final decision, along with any conditions it chooses to add. The act also requires the NEB to conduct a public hearing for any project involving more than 40 km of pipeline.

“The assessment is undertaken by a team of NEB staff experts, including engineers, economists and environmental scientists,” Punchak says. “But until we get the formal application, we won’t know how it will all play out. Where and how the hearings will be conducted is still to be determined.”

In the meantime, the NEB will be conducting online technology-based info sessions. It will also undertake Aboriginal engagement and provide both online and one-onone support with the public and other stakeholders on the approval process.

Along with the hearing order, the NEB will also release its 32

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•

• •

•

be pressure-tested at an operating pressure much higher than normal; Periodic internal cleaning inspections and random product sampling will be undertaken to mitigate internal corrosion. Chemical corrosion inhibitors, biocides, corrosion coupons or probes will be used as necessary; High-resolution inline inspection tools will be used during operations to detect internal and external defects; A SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition)

system in the company’s operations control centre will monitor pipeline flow, pressure, temperature and equipment status on a continuous basis; and The pipeline system is designed to shut down and/or isolate sections of the pipeline using valves that can be remotely activated and controlled by the control centre.

Other valves in the system will close on reverse pressure.

application for intervenors. Those people who may be directly affected by the project and/or have relevant information to contribute can take part, either as full-fledged intervenors or by simply submitting a letter of content indicating their comments, concerns about or support for the project. It appears that there will be no shortage of landowners, environmental groups, First Nations representatives, industry associations, provincial agencies and municipalities lining up to fill out those application forms.

DEVIL’S IN THE DETAILS It may be too early to tell if TransCanada’s safety plans are adequate. “Everything is in the details, and we have not seen the company’s detailed plans for Energy East yet,” Fred Wilson, director of strategic planning for Unifor, says from Toronto. “However, there is not a lot to be desired in the pipeline sector’s safety record. I don’t know whether accidents are becoming more frequent or we are just hearing more about them these days, but we do know that environmental releases and worker safety are closely related.”

Unifor represents approximately 11,900 Canadian petroleum workers, both upstream — in the oil sands or working offshore — and downstream in the refineries, gas plants and petrochemical facilities. “Safety is regulated in the pipeline sector, but those regulations are not always enforced,” Wilson contends. “Pipeline safety issues require heightened vigilance. There has got to be zero tolerance for anything that can impact pipeline integrity.”

While Unifor will be involved in the upcoming Energy East approval process, the union has not yet taken a firm po-

sition — either for or against — the project. That will depend, in part, on whether the pipeline is designed to meet the country’s energy security needs by delivering crude to Canadian refineries for processing or used primarily to export Alberta bitumen to foreign markets. “We will have to put the economic and environmental rationale under a critical lens before we make our decision,” Wilson says.

In terms of the environmental, public health and spill risks, Enbridge’s Line 9 and TransCanada’s Energy East project are absolutely equivalent, says Adam Scott, climate and energy program manager with Environmental Defence in Toronto. Both companies are converting gas pipelines to carry diluted bitumen (or dilbit) east for the first time. And both projects could cause a major spill into one of the dozens of waterways they cross, he cautions.

“Industry is not always truthful about their spill-cleanup capabilities,” Scott charges. “In many cases, they do not recover more than a tiny fraction of the oil spilled. The rest contaminates soils, sediments and, in the case of dilbit, sinks to the bottom of rivers, resulting in long-term environmental and human exposure to toxic chemicals.”

TransCanada says it will take “special precautions to significantly reduce the risk of a pipeline rupture and spill in the vicinity of a water crossing.” This could include using thickerwalled pipe and installing shut-off valves on both sides of the crossing to stop the flow of oil quickly if instruments detect a drop in pipeline pressure, which indicates a potential leak.

EXPLOSIVE RISKS A major spill or release could also threaten the health of first responders. “Some of the diluents in dilbit, such as benzene, are highly volatile and evaporate almost instantly on exposure to air,” Scott says. “And despite industry studies, there is also anecdotal evidence that dilbit is more corrosive.”

The eastern pipelines could also carry Bakken shale oil — the kind that exploded during the Lac-Mégantic train wreck last July. “It has a flammability comparable to gasoline and poses a very high fire and explosion risk,” Scott adds.

For its part, the Energy East Pipeline will be designed to transport a variety of crude types, including light crude, synthetic crude, heavy crude and dilbit. “Diluted bitumen has similar characteristics and behaves the same way as conven-

tional crude oil, which initially floats in water,” TransCanada says. However, crude oil does have the potential to sink or become submerged if allowed to “weather” and when released into turbulent water, “making swift response to a spill in water necessary.”

But it is not just about spills and fires. “Those in the oil industry need to understand that a significant amount of the opposition to these pipelines has to do with climate change.

A project like Energy East will have a massive impact on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions,” Scott says. “We are not trying to attack the people working to make the shipping infrastructure safer, but there are bigger issues [at] play here.”

A recent report by The Pembina Institute says the Energy East pipeline will facilitate the expansion of production in the oil sands, generating an estimated 32 million tonnes of GHG — equivalent to the tailpipe emissions produced by seven million cars.

“Even at today’s production levels, the oilsands sector has significant environmental impacts,” says Clare Demerse, director of federal policy for the institute. “The Energy East pipeline would provide oilsands companies with significant new access to global oil markets,” allowing them to increase production levels and further increasing GHG emissions.

Environmental groups do not buy the argument that stopping the pipeline will force more oil into rail cars, with all the risks that may involve. “Analysts comparing the spill risk of pipelines to trains have typically concluded that while trains spill more often, pipelines spill larger volumes,” Demerse says. “It is clear that the regulations governing crude-by-rail in Canada need to be strengthened. However, the reality is that no method of transporting crude will ever be 100 per cent safe. The safest choice of all — both for communities and the world’s climate — is to use less oil.”

This pipeline infrastructure is essential to the pace and scale of the oilsands expansion that the energy industry plans, Scott says. “The industry has already maxed out the rail transport capacity, and new tanker cars are on back order for years. If Energy East doesn’t go through, the planned oilsands production expansion doesn’t go through.”

Follow us on Twitter @OHSCanada

William M. Glenn is a writer in Toronto.

“The reality is that no method of transporting crude will ever be 100 per cent safe.” www.ohscanada.com

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CONCUSSION

34

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on thin

ICE

BY ELLIE GORDON-MOERSHEL

A class-action lawsuit alleging that the National Hockey League (NHL) has promoted fighting, while downplaying the associated risk of head injuries, is making its way through the courts. The case, filed by former NHL players Dave Christian, Reed Larson and William Bennett on April 15, is the latest development in an ongoing debate

IMAGE: VADIM VAHRAMEEV, ILLUSTRATION SOURCE

over the role of violence in professional hockey.

T

he recent complaint, filed by law firm Zimmerman Reed in Minneapolis, claims that concussions suffered by former professional hockey players in the NHL put them at higher risk for long-term neurological problems. It claims that the NHL was aware of the risks associated with repetitive traumatic brain injuries, but deliberately ignored the information to the detriment of the plaintiffs and others who participated in hockey in the NHL. Allowing fistfighting, which has been a core component of NHL hockey since the league’s inception in 1917, to continue to be a routine part of the game is a “plain statement that suffering severe blows to the face and head are not serious injuries,” the law firm argues.

For its part, the NHL continues to defend fighting. In an NHL.com article published in 2011, league commissioner Gary Bettman says it is premature to link fighting in hockey with degenerative brain conditions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) or even claim that fighting is dangerous.

When presented with Bettman’s claim, Robin Green, Ph.D., neuropsychologist and research scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and an associate professor at the University of Toronto, responds that “just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean it is not there.”

She notes that this is particularly true with concussions.

Even when it is known that a concussion has occurred, computerized tomography or CT scans, magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological assessments will often turn up normal.

Blaine Hoshizaki, Ph.D., professor in the faculty of health at the University of Ottawa, compares it to smoking. “We know that the risk increases as you have increased trauma. So if you smoke more, there is a higher risk of increases in cancer rates. If you have more exposure to brain trauma, you get a higher risk of neurological disorders,” he illustrates, while acknowledging that some people who have sustained repetitive brain trauma do not appear to have long-term side effects.

“Both the NFL and the NHL, of course, will always state that there is no conclusive evidence that makes that connection. There is some truth in that, except that you can say the same thing in a lot of different workplace risks. It is about managing the risks,” he adds.

The NHL 2012-13 regular season had fights in 36.6 per cent of games, according to hockeyfights.com. In Concussions in the National Hockey League: The Video Analysis Project, author Michael Hutchison conducted a video analysis of events that resulted in concussions for NHL regular-season play over a 3.5-year period from 2006 to 2010. He concluded that fighting accounted for one tenth of the total number of concussions captured on video.

“Fighting is a cause of probably only five per cent or so of the concussions we see,” says Charles Tator, Ph.D., project director of the Canadian Sports Concussion Project, based at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre at the University Health Network’s Toronto Western Hospital. “There is virtually no treatment for concussion,” he says. “That is one of the reasons for our sports-concussion project — to try to develop better treatment methods and also better diagnostic methods.”

Angela Colantonio, Ph.D., professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy at the University of Toronto, agrees that it is difficult to link long-term neurological problems or brain diseases like CTE to hockey fighting, considering the many variables among individuals heading into fights.

That said, Dr. Tator sees fighting as one type of aggressive act in hockey that leads to brain injury. “I think the view of the league that it doesn’t really cause brain injury is incorrect.” It is not the leading cause of concussions in the league, but it is “five per cent that should be eliminated.”

TRAUMA ON ICE Chronic traumatic encephalopathy does not exactly roll off the tongue. Yet it is hard not to mention the brain condition when researching the health risks of fighting in the NHL. Dr. Tator describes the condition as “the most significant 36

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type of brain degeneration” on the concussion spectrum. It resembles Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease and leads to premature death.

At this point, CTE can be reliably diagnosed only postmortem. It was posthumously found in the brain of Saskatchewan-born NHL enforcer Derek Boogaard, who died at age 28, officially due to an accidental overdose of alcohol and oxycodone. Boogaard’s family has filed a wrongfuldeath lawsuit against the NHL for Boogaard’s brain damage and addiction to prescription painkillers. With his CTE diagnosis, Boogaard joined the company of two other Canadian-born NHL enforcers, Reggie Fleming and Bob Probert.

As research on concussion is in its infancy, scientists are careful to qualify their results. After Boogaard’s family donated his brain to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy for study, the centre issued a statement saying that “based on the small sample of enforcers we have studied, it is possible that frequently engaging in fistfights as a hockey player may put one at increased risk for this degenerative brain disease.”

Dr. Tator explains that funding for this type of research in Canada was “virtually nil” until three or four years ago.

As such, even some of the terminology is still up for debate.

Acquired brain injury happens during a person’s lifetime; it is “an umbrella term for both traumatic and non-traumatic [brain injury],” Dr. Colantonio explains. Concussion has traditionally been labelled a “mild-traumatic brain injury.”

But Dr. Tator finds this term misleading. “I don’t think the term ‘mild-traumatic brain injury’ is a good one, because you can’t tell somebody who is still symptomatic three or four years after a concussion that their problem is mild.”

He prefers the term “concussion”, which he feels resonates with the public.

Dr. Hoshizaki cites two mechanisms through which an injury can be sustained while fighting on ice: a brain rotation caused by a punch to the head, and a traumatic blow after falling and hitting a body part hard on the ice.

In Zurich, the International Conference on Concussion in Sport held in November of 2012 defined a concussion as essentially a brain injury that may be caused by a direct blow, typically resulting in the rapid onset of short-lived neurological impairment, and may or may not involve loss of consciousness. In some cases, symptoms may be prolonged.

One of the most important tools to come out of these conferences is the Zurich guidelines. First established in 2005, these guidelines have been disseminated through the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT) system. The most recent version of the tool, SCAT3, includes a symptom evaluation, cognitive assessment, balance examination and coordination examination.

Both Hockey Canada and the NHL now use the SCAT system when evaluating injured athletes for concussions.

Since 2011, the NHL requires players who are suspected of having a concussion to be removed from the game and sent to a quiet room to be examined. Prior to this protocol change, players were assessed right on the bench in the midst of the game-time frenzy.

DRAWING THE LINE Despite these positive developments, there is an ominous note highlighted on the concussion assessment tool: “An athlete may have a concussion even if their SCAT3 is ‘normal.’”

Dr. Green explains that “concussion symptoms do not always fully manifest themselves immediately.” In other words, the physician still needs to exercise a certain amount of subjective medical judgement.

“Concussions are notoriously hard to measure unless there are overt, observed effects at the time of injury,” Dr. Green says, citing loss of or clear altered consciousness. “After that, it is hard to detect them on imaging unless we use experimental approaches, and then it is still unreliable at the single-case level.

Neuropsychological assessment is also too coarse for the subtle effects of concussions.”

Dr. Tator points out that a successful diagnosis of a concussion relies on “the interplay between the knowledgeable practitioner and a compliant patient.” One can imagine how dicey this could get with an NHL player who is desperate to get back on the ice, facing a physician on the team’s payroll. To address this potential conflict of interest, the National Football League (NFL) requires a player who has suffered a concussion to be cleared by the team doctors and an independent concussion expert before returning to play.

Within the context of this celebrated move, Toronto-based sports and entertainment lawyer Layth Gafoor with Lucentem Sports & Entertainment Law, points out that sport and celebrity culture is “very pervasive” in terms of its effect on people. “So long as you have people who, even in a professional capacity, want to be involved in this area, it does somewhat compromise their independence.”

He adds that running a big sports league is “a private business”. A physician who sits too many players by taking them out of the game due to injuries runs the risk of being replaced.

To address this issue, Gafoor suggests establishing an independent body to select objective third parties to assess individual cases of players who wish to return to the field or ice after suffering concussions. These third parties could also change members on a rotating basis to ensure impartiality.

“The other step is to create baselines,” which he says is happening across state levels in the United States. Baseline testing is a pre-season exam conducted by a trained healthcare professional to assess an athlete’s balance and brain function and to detect the presence of concussion symptoms. Results from baseline or pre-injury tests can be compared to those from a similar exam conducted by a healthcare professional

“Frequently engaging in fistfights as a hockey player may put one at increased risk for this degenerative brain disease.”

during the season if an athlete is suspected of having suffered a concussion.

Gafoor says the baseline-assessment information needs to be shared and applied according to the same standards, regardless of where the athlete is injured.

“Right now, as it exists, if you are a football player in Michigan, the protocol is slightly different than if you go right next door to Ohio.”

NEW DESIGNS To be clear, fighting is penalized in the NHL. Any player engaging in a fight receives a five-minute major penalty. There are varying degrees of additional penalization, depending on whether a player is deemed to be an instigator or aggressor.

As of this year, players get an extra twominute minor penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct if they remove their helmets prior to engaging in fights.

An appropriate comparison is with men’s Olympic hockey. Any player who engages in a fight gets the same five-minute major with a slew of additional punishments: the offending player’s team must play with one man short for 20 or 25 minutes, the player is taken out for the rest of the game and can suffer possible further game suspensions.

While Dr. Hoshizaki, who sat on the NHL advisory panel for the reduction of injuries in the NHL, would like to see fighting removed from the game, he believes that the NHL is committed to looking at the causes of brain injury. He cites two-minute penalties for an illegal check to the head and five minutes for checking from behind.

Dr. Hoshizaki’s research group, which reconstructs head injuries to identify the type of trauma that brain tissue sustains in hockey games, claims that its work has led to improvements in hockey-helmet designs. Current helmets work well in preventing catastrophic injuries like skull fractures, but they are not designed to cushion rotational acceleration or the brain jiggling in the head, which is what Dr. Hoshizaki views as a leading cause of concussion.

“The way to knock somebody out or to certainly give them a concussion is to hook them,” he says. A move, such as a punch to the jaw, induces a rotation on the brain, which then creates a high risk of concussion.

The design of the new hockey helmet includes pods that manage linear acceleration and bladders that decouple the impact from the head, allowing the helmet to absorb the angular acceleration. The two systems work together to manage both linear and rotational acceleration for high and midenergy impacts experienced in hockey, decreasing the risk of catastrophic and concussive injuries.

Dr. Hoshizaki hopes that his team will have a standard to present to the NHL within a year, adding that the NHL is not www.ohscanada.com

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directly involved in certifying helmets. In Canada, helmets are approved by the CSA Group.

APPROACHING GROUND ZERO Similar litigations surrounding concussions suffered from professional sports are also playing out in the National Football League (NFL).

More than 4,500 retired football players sued the NFL over concussion-related brain injuries, alleging that the league misled them about the dangers of concussions. It may appear that last August’s US$765 million settlement, which a federal judge rejected as inadequate earlier this year, was a watershed moment for professional sports concussion lawsuits. But Gafoor notes that is only one piece of the puzzle.

“The argument that the players asserted is that the league was in possession of information of the long-term effects of head injury and that they actively suppressed that information. That is the most damaging part of the initial claim,” Gafoor says. Since the lawsuit was settled out of court, it is not known if the league suppressed this information. The settlement also does not mean an admission of fault on the NFL’s part, Gafoor adds.

The NHL is currently facing two concussion-related lawsuits from former players and a wrongful-death suit from Boogaard’s family.

Fighting is traditionally done only by the enforcers. Penalties increase if a player fights against another who is unwilling to engage. Since the enforcer plays the role of the fighter for his team, it seems reasonable to conclude that he consents to the risk of injury from fighting on ice.

But Gafoor contends that a player cannot be in a position to give informed consent, as scientific research on the effects of repeat concussions is still in its early stages. “There probably will be a ground zero at some point, and I think we are approaching it, where the science starts to become more overwhelming and a consensus is formed.”

early. Todd Jackson, senior manager of insurance and membership services with Hockey Canada in Ottawa, says the organization has been delivering the Hockey Canada Safety Program since the mid-’90s. “We follow the Zurich consensus protocol,” Jackson says, citing a six-step return-to-play process that Hockey Canada imparts to volunteers and safety people. “We follow that through the advice of our chief medical officer who actually sits as part of the group [that] wrote the Zurich consensus.” Last year, the Child SCAT3 was released to assess concussion for individuals aged five to 12.

In the last few years, Jackson reports that Hockey Canada has increased education on safety for its trainers and added a small component to the Respect In Sport parent program delivered across Canada to make parents more aware of the risk of concussions. In collaboration with organizations that include the Coaching Association of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport and Parachute Canada, Hockey Canada has developed a smartphone app that provides information on prevention, recognition of concussions and proper return to play.

“Our hope is that our coaches and trainers will download that app and take that information into the changing room and pass that on to the kids,” Jackson says.

The collective-bargaining agreement between the National Hockey Players’ Association and the NHL sets out the terms and conditions of employment for all professional hockey players in the NHL. The current agreement, set to remain in effect until 2022, recognizes the need for discipline on the use of “excessive and unnecessary force and reckless acts resulting in injury.” But the agreement is quick to qualify that “in doing so, parties do not intend to alter the basic fabric of our game.”

Over the years, the fabric of the game has been altered through the requirement to wear helmets and visors and through strict penalties for hits to the head. “I think it is a safer game today, and I think if we can get fighting out of it, it will be a safer game tomorrow,” Dr. Hoshizaki suggests.

As the science develops and lawsuits pile up, what will ultimately trigger the elimination of fighting from professional hockey remains to be seen. What is clear today is that the topic remains controversial.

Whatever wiggle room there is in the science to justify fistfights in professional hockey is quickly sealing up.

BABY STEPS Whatever wiggle room there is in the science to justify fistfights in professional hockey is quickly sealing up. In 2013, researchers at a Mayo clinic conference on concussions in hockey called for a ban on fighting at all levels of the sport.

Even the fans seem to be turning, as a 2013 Angus Reid Public Opinion poll reported that 67 per cent of Canadians and 68 per cent of hockey fans believe that onice fights should be eliminated from professional hockey.

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Ellie Gordon-Moershel is a writer in Toronto.

safespec.dupont.com

SAFETY GEAR

FIRST AID

Beyond Band-Aid

By Carmelle Wolfson

I

n every workplace, there is the potential for accidents to happen. As such, organizations must be prepared to respond to incidents regardless of whether an injury or illness occurs in an office or a warehouse. In such scenarios, first-aid products are often the first line of defence before professional medical help arrives, should the extent of the injury or health problem warrant further treatment.

“If somebody gets injured, it is the employer’s responsibility to make sure that the person is provided with first-aid treatment,” says Claudio Dente, president of Dentec Safety Specialists Inc. in Newmarket, Ontario. The company sells industrial first-aid products under its Shield brand.

Philip Turmel, occupational health and safety specialist with SCN Industrial, a wholesaler of industrial first-aid products and other health and safety supplies in Montreal, notes that businesses in the past have tried to cut costs in their budgets. But employers today are investing more in the safety of their workers, thanks to more stringent regulations and enforcement.

“People come first,” Turmel says.

“They have to “It is one budget you can’t really cut into. You can repair a ladder, but you ensure that the can’t repair a person sometimes.”

first-aid kit is

MUST, NOT MAY Legislation requires workplaces intended for a across Canada to have first-aid kits on hand. “Every provincial regula- business and not tion stipulates what an employer for home use.” must do with regards to first aid. So it is clearly laid out as to the obligations,” Dente says. “It even tells you what has to be in the kit and the number of pieces of that particular item in the kit.”

While requirements of what a first-aid kit should contain may vary from province to province, basic supplies that must be provided in most general workplace first-aid kits include bandages, gauze pads, adhesive tape and safety pins.

It is important to ensure that the kit is made specifically for the workplace, advises Tony Kourebeles, president of First Aid Central in Laval, Quebec. “It is not a case of one kit fits all,” says Kourebeles, who adds that employers should be careful about where they purchase these kits.

“Not because of the quality, but just that they have to ensure that the first-aid kit is intended for a business and not for home use,” Kourebeles cautions. If the medical products within the kit are manufactured overseas and not approved

by Health Canada, “it might not necessarily meet the obligations they have as an employer.”

Dente says it is important to conduct a hazard assessment to determine what additional supplies are needed beyond the 40

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basic requirements in a workplace first-aid kit. “General industry believes that if they provide a first-aid kit that meets the regulatory requirements, they are okay. But the general requirements in many cases do not have specific first-aid treatment for a particular type of hazard.”

Dentec offers a service in which a professional conducts an audit at the workplace to identify the hazards or potential injuries that would require additional first-aid supplies, which are not included in a general first-aid kit containing only the basic items stipulated in provincial regulations.

Workplaces that may need extra first-aid supplies include those involving hot applications like foundries and food services, or jobs that require handling chemicals. For instance, Dentec offers a solution called Neutraliser, which neutralizes acid or alkali chemical attacks on the skin. It also sells a product called Burn Free. Available in a gel or dressing, it contains a disinfectant that cools down and reduces pain associated with burns.

FROM MUFFLER TO LUMBER Gerald Yaffe, president of specialty first-aid company Kit Care Corporation in Mississauga, Ontario, affirms that each industry comes with its own unique hazards. “Obviously in the hospitality industry, you are subject to burns and eye injuries, splashes, cuts and punctures. In general industry, you are subject to cuts and lacerations, bruises and falls, eye injuries, et cetera,” he says.

Without a thorough understanding of a workplace and its history of injuries, companies could find themselves falling short of what they actually need, cautions David Lapp, senior product marketing manager (first aid) with Honeywell’s North line in Cranston, Florida.

“First aid is a very general term,” Lapp says. “In Canada, there are very specific definitions behind first aid.” He points out that high-heat situations, such as working outdoors during the summer, could trigger dehydration among employees and necessitate emergency water rations with electrolytes, which may fall outside the normal definition of first aid.

For slips, trips and falls, Yaffe recommends obtaining proper bandaging materials and cold packs. For heavy manufacturing, construction, woodworking or welding, first-aid supplies that treat deep cuts, punctures and abrasions may be needed. With regards to sheet-metal shops, Yaffe says tourniquets — bandages or strips of cloth that stop or slow bleeding by compressing blood vessels — are essential. “Sheet-metal working is inherently dangerous, and limbs can be severed simply because somebody slips during a cutting operation.”

In the oil and gas industry, emergency first responders are generally hired to attend to medical needs, and a full emergency medical technician first-aid kit — rather than a simple workplace first-aid kit — is required. “One of the flaws in the system is that the first-aid kits or first-aid requirements [are]

PHOTOS (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT): NORTH BY HONEYWELL; KIT CARE CORPORATION; FIRST AID CENTRAL.

not industry-specific,” Yaffe says, noting that the needs of a restaurant kitchen are different from those of a muffler shop, a lumber yard or a factory producing metal objects.

For foodservices professionals, First Aid Central supplies bandages geared to the restaurant industry. The bandages come in blue, so that workers can easily see them if they fall off during food preparation and prevent contamination.

In addition to the items typically found inside a first-aid kit, some larger companies may require medical devices, such as emergency-oxygen units. SOS Technologies offers an emergency-oxygen program comprising emergencyresponse training, maintenance service and an emergencyoxygen inhalator for use in various emergency situations.

“There may be somebody going into shock. It could be a stroke or asthma attack or heart attack,” says Terry Brown, president of SOS Technologies in Toronto. “And certainly going along with the training, the emergency oxygen could help in keeping that person breathing and stable and reduce anxieties prior to the arrival of 9-1-1.”

first five minutes, Yaffe explains. For every minute after that, the chance of success decreases by 10 per cent. “With our ambulance service [in Toronto] being around nine to 10 minutes to get to a location and another three or four minutes to get to the actual victim, there is not much chance of the individual being saved,” he suggests.

Yaffe adds that Manitoba is the first province to legislate defibrillators in public buildings, and he believes that it will soon be mandatory across Canada.

Training is another key component of providing workplace first aid. Along with the kit itself, employers may be required to have one or more workers trained in administering first aid. Organizations that offer certification include St. John Ambulance, Canadian Red Cross and the Lifesaving Society of Canada. Companies like Kit Care also offer firstaid training.

Yaffe says the Canadian Heart and Stroke foundation sets guidelines for training on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). He adds that first-aid training courses comprise different teaching modules that include topics such as bandaging, CPR, defibrillation, broken bones, severe bleeding, choking, concussions, eye injuries and burns.

SAVING LIVES A defibrillator is another item that can be found in more and more workplaces nowadays.

Brown notes that defibrillators are in high demand. “A number of years ago, it was much more of a hard sell,” he says, adding that in the past, MATERIAL MATTERS employers were hesitant to buy First-aid kits come in various sizes defibrillators as they were exand are available in bags and plaspensive, on top of concerns surtic or metal cases. For cold envirounding issues with liability. ronments, such as organizations As automatic external deoperating in northern Canada, fibrillators (AEDs) are more Lapp says a first-aid kit encased in commonly found in public armetal is more appropriate. eas — in conjunction with pub“If you are very far north, buying lic funding to acquire them in a plastic case is not recommended, facilities like community centres because it gets so cold that the plastic is and increased publicity about brittle,” adds Lapp, who recommends AEDs saving lives — people are Depending on the type of environment in which a steel case instead. becoming more comfortable first-aid supplies are used, first-aid kits can be A warehouse environment may encased in plastic (top left), steel (top right) or also require the use of a metal case. with using defibrillators.

If the kit falls onto concrete or hits The Canadian Heart and cloth bags (bottom). something hard, it will not break, “as Stroke Foundation notes that legislation in provinces across Canada protects individuals opposed to having something in plastic, which is a little more who use AEDs from liability when they are used in the con- fragile,” Kourebeles says.

In terms of the location, the first-aid kit must be visible, text of saving a life. For instance, in Manitoba, The Good Samaritan Protection Act or Bill 214 protects lay rescuers from easy to access and not hidden away. It should also be marked liability, as long as they are acting in good faith. Similarly, as a first-aid kit on the outside of the box or bag. Workplaces Ontario has the Chase McEachern Act (Heart Defibrillator may want to consider acquiring signs for first-aid stations or Civil Liability), 2007, which protects people from civil liabil- kits placed in locations that are not clearly visible.

“You don’t want to have it hidden in a drawer and no one ity when they attempt to save lives using public AEDs. Brown recommends annual recertification of the AED knows it is there,” Kourebeles says. “If the kit itself is not extraining program. “I think one of the problems is, either posed and it is enclosed somewhere, then there should be people who are not trained or people who are trained close signage, a poster or a plastic sign, or even a paper that writes to three years ago still have a valid certificate, but may feel ‘first-aid kit here.’”

He points out that provincial legislation may require largvery uncomfortable because they might have forgotten most er workplaces to have more than one kit. Kourebeles suggests of what they learned.”

When the heart stops, an AED needs to be used within the that in a warehouse exceeding 100 feet in length, it is prudent www.ohscanada.com

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READY TO HELP

Regulations on workplace first-aid kits vary according to the jurisdiction. For provincially regulated workplaces, each province or territory sets out separate guidelines under that region’s occupational health and safety act.

Meanwhile, federally owned entities with offices across the country must follow federal requirements under Canada’s Occupational Health and Safety Regulations.

Aside from jurisdiction, factors that will determine which items are required in a first-aid kit include the type of worksite, level of hazard posed, proximity to the nearest emergency medical facility and the number of employees. Employers must also develop and implement first-aid procedures and keep up-to-date written records for providing first aid at the worksite, including the procedures for responding to a call for first aid, the first-aid attendant’s authority over injured workers and the pre-arranged routes in and out of a workplace and to medical treatment.

to have one kit at the back and one at the front of the warehouse for easy access. If an office has multiple floors, one kit should be available on each floor, “so you are not necessarily running up to the third floor to go get the first-aid kit, when the injured employee is on the first floor.”

A TRUSTED SOURCE Aside from the hazards specific to each industry, cost is another factor to consider. First-aid kits can cost anywhere from about $5 to $300. A steel case will be more expensive than a plastic case, while a larger kit, which may include items like a sphygmometer to check blood pressure, heavy-duty sheers that can cut through a seatbelt or a stethoscope, will also run up the tab.

Lapp cautions against making a decision based solely on prices. “Buying the cheapest is not always the best,” he says.

Often, these decisions are made based on information on a spreadsheet, without ever seeing or touching the actual materials. “The best thing to do is really get samples of everything you are trying. Make sure that there is a true difference.”

Lapp stresses the importance of purchasing high-quality products. “There is nothing worse than having something and then finding that it is going to fail on you,” he says. For instance, a bandage that does not stay on and lets dirt get beneath the skin could turn a minor cut into a serious infection, which could then spread, resulting in a potentially deadly Staphylococcus infection. “This may seem unrealistic, yet I just met somebody this happened to. Now he is on intravenous antibiotics for 18 weeks.”

Choosing a trustworthy supplier is also key. “You need to have a reliable source that can deliver the products in a timely manner,” Dente says.

Another consideration is whether the supplier offers a diverse range of products. Dente recommends checking that the first-aid products have Medical Device Licences approved by Health Canada and that Health Canada has granted a Medical Device Establishment Licence to the company for the purpose of distributing, importing or manufacturing medical products like first-aid kits. This means that the product or company meets protocols relating to quality control, manufacturing process, standard operating procedures and 42

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recall established by Health Canada.

Kourebeles observes that over the past few years, regulators have been taking a more hands-on approach to compliance in this area. “Health Canada is definitely stepping up and ensuring that the people that are offering first aid are compliant,” he says. “They are doing their part to ensure that kits on the market — at least for businesses that are selling first-aid kits to the Canadian population — are registered, compliant and they are trying to offer an above-average product.”

TO EACH HIS OWN Many suppliers, including North by Honeywell and First Aid Central, now offer clients who have special requirements the option of customizing the standard workplace first-aid kits by adding items to the kit, while ensuring that it complies with provincial regulations.

Meanwhile, Dentec provides hazard-specific kits. Some companies, like SOS Technologies in Toronto, track expiration dates and inform customers prior to those dates that they need to buy new items.

Lapp believes that one of the biggest mistakes Canadian companies make is buying kits, but not maintaining them.

“Products start expiring. Things get old. Things get used and not replaced. So maintaining that kit is absolutely critical, and also, it is required by law.”

Most items in a first-aid kit, including bandages and gauze pads, have expiration dates, because they must be kept sterile.

“Ever seen a bandage where the packaging started drying up and opening up? Well, that means it is no longer sterile.”

Maintaining kits involves replacing items once they have been used, expired or compromised. Commonly, an employee will be responsible for doing this by going through a checklist provided along with the kit, followed by ordering the supplies that are needed. This person can be a designated safety representative, receptionist, nurse or even an employer.

Depending on who you speak to and the province in which an organization operates, recommendations on how often first-aid kits should be checked can vary anywhere from once a month to once a year. In Ontario, kits must be checked quarterly each year. It is also a good practice to check a kit immediately after a workplace injury, since supplies will likely be used and need to be replaced. A quality first-aid kit should hold items that do not expire within a year.

Yaffe recommends that the person checking the kit ensure that it is clean and free of blood-born pathogens. The firstaid kit should also be well-organized enough so that one can quickly see the products needed at a glance. Lastly, check that the items inside have not expired and are sealed and individually wrapped. Kit Care provides a service to customers by inspecting and refilling first-aid kits on a regular basis.

Lapp suggests that hiring a company to check the kit can save a lot of hassle and that some do a very good job. “The only thing with this is to make sure that they are not taking you for a ride, if you will.”

In some cases, he cautions that the servicer may throw away an entire box of bandages because three bandages have been taken out. “That can get expensive if you don’t have a very reputable and good control over whoever you hired to maintain the kits.”

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Carmelle Wolfson is assistant editor of

ohs canada.

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ACCIDENT PREVENTION

WORK ZONES

On the Road ROAD RISKS: Summertime is here, and with it comes construction season on Canada’s roads and highways. While road construction projects may pose an inconvenience to commuters by blocking off lanes and obstructing traffic, road workers are the ones who are vulnerable to passing vehicles travelling at high speeds, driven by negligent or errant drivers.

Road workers who operate construction vehicles are also at risk of injury or death from collisions and getting caught in running equipment. Poor lighting and visibility, bad weather and congestion in work areas pose additional hazards, notes information from the United States’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in Washington D.C.

MEN AT WORK: Apart from construction employees who repair or upgrade sections of roads, flaggers who direct traffic at these sites are arguably at even higher risk, since they are in close proximity to passing vehicles.

Others who are exposed to traffic risk include municipal employees, telecommunications and utilities workers, landscapers, maintenance workers and emergency or enforcement personnel. Operators of tow trucks and other vehicles also need to be mindful of how they could be a hazard to other workers on the road and to themselves.

BY THE NUMBERS: According to the Transportation Association of Canada in Ottawa, workzone vehicle collision is a continuing problem, especially in Quebec. From 2010 to 2012, there were 10,263 work-zone collisions in Quebec, which accounted for 3.1 per cent of all of the province’s road collisions.

Of the 10,263 work-zone collisions, 27 resulted in death. Alberta saw a total of 5,285 workzone collisions from 2008 to 2012 — 15 of which were fatal — while Ontario averaged 1.5 fatal work-zone collisions annually from 2005 to 2009.

A study from the University of Saskatchewan, Characteristics of Work Zone Crashes and Fatalities in Canada, says 79 per cent of fatal work-zone incidents happen on rural roads and 52 per cent on rural, undivided highways. About 30 per cent of fatal crashes result from excessive driver speed, while crashes occur most often in clear weather and snowy conditions.

LESSER-KNOWN HAZARDS: While passing traffic is clearly a danger, one must not overlook the hazards posed by heavy equipment, since many work zones involve construction work. Trucks, cranes and pumps can cause injuries or worse from moving or overturning equipment, dropped loads, falls from heights or electrocution. The Infrastructure Health & Safety Association (IHSA) in Mississauga, Ontario recommends proper equipment maintenance, sufficient training for operators and careful site planning in advance to minimize these risks.

Ground excavation also comes with multiple hazards. Unstable trenches can cave in on workers due to improperly installed support systems, weather, vibration, moisture, excessive weight near the trenches and other factors. Slips, trips and falls are also possible, as are flooding, contact with underground electrical utilities and heavy equipment or vehicles falling into the excavation pit. The IHSA recommends the donning of proper personal protective equipment, such as hard hats, safety boots, eye or ear protection and reflective clothing.

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HEADS-UP: Identifying a work zone clearly to drivers by using signage, setting up clear barriers and providing visual directions minimize the chances of a car plowing into a work area. These signs should be located in a way that gives drivers sufficient time to make the adjustments safely. It is often necessary to request a reduced speed limit from the transportation authority.

For work at night or in inclement weather, workers should wear reflective, high-visibility fluorescent clothing. There may also be a need to deploy additional traffic-control personnel, like traffic police officers. As traffic-control training is required for all workers and supervisors involved in roadwork, employers should schedule safety talks on an ongoing basis.

CHANGING CHANNELS: Work zones require channeling devices to guide traffic away when part of a road is blocked off. Common channelling devices include the following: • Traffic cones: The familiar, plastic cone-shaped pylons, often orange in colour and at least half a metre high, are used to confine the work area. Cones used at night require reflective bands for visibility; • Construction barrels: Also known as drums, these are similar to traffic cones, but are larger and easier to spot by drivers; • Barricades: These structures, which usually come in wood or plastic etched with orange and white diagonal stripes, signify a construction area. Some have flashing lights posted on them; • Tubular markers: Orange, reflective cylindrical markers used in a similar way as traffic cones are, but attached to the pavement; and • Temporary raised islands: Pavement platforms usually about 10 centimetres high and half-ametre wide.

DIFFERENT STROKES: While Canada does not yet have national safety standards for work zones, many provinces or jurisdictions have devised their own guidelines, policies and regulations, guided by best practices. A typical maximum speed for drivers passing workers is 60 kilometres per hour, except on roads where the speed limit is already 60 or lower. Otherwise, specific standards, such as how far in advance to place signs and barriers, may vary by jurisdiction. The City of Regina’s Temporary Traffic Control Manual classifies five main sections of a work zone as follows: • Advance warning area (telling drivers that road work is ahead); • Transition area (where traffic is diverted); • Buffer space (to protect workers); • Work area; and • Termination area (where regular driving resumes).

Newfoundland and Labrador’s latest Traffic Control Manual includes a similar classification, which adds a “Taper Area” for the gradual narrowing of a traffic lane. Nova Scotia, Manitoba and British Columbia also have work-zone guides available online.

TAKING ACTION: One province that is taking proactive measures to beef up work-zone safety is Saskatchewan, which started installing photo radar at work zones last year. Automated speed equipment captures images of the licence plates of vehicles travelling beyond the permitted maximum speed, and the cameras’ locations are changed randomly, so that drivers never know when they could be caught speeding past road-work zones. Some work zones in Manitoba have already been using photo radar for several years.

In 2013, British Columbia began a “Cone Zone” safety campaign to promote public awareness of the dangers associated with working on highways. This year, the Transportation Association of Canada is working to develop national guidelines for work-zone safety. The project is funded by numerous provincial organizations and seeks to synthesize best practices for traffic management, safety audits, incident documentation and other areas. www.ohscanada.com

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HEALTH WATCH

OBESITY

Tightening the Belt

By Jeff Cottrill

A

study down south, which finds obese employees cost companies about twice as much money on average as other employees do, highlights the consequences that obesity may have on the workplace.

The study, published in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion, reports that overweight workers have higher rates of absenteeism and claims for workers’ compensation, medical care and short-term disability. An employee who is not obese costs an average of $3,830 per year in covered medical claims, sick days, shortterm disability and workers’ compensation, while a morbidly obese person costs employers $8,067. The findings are based on data from nearly 30,000 employees over a threeyear period.

“I don’t think we fully understand the direct association of obesity and the impact on the workplace,” says Mary Forhan, assistant professor with the University of Alberta’s faculty of rehabilitation medicine in Edmonton and a member of the Canadian Obesity Network.

Hélène Charlebois, a registered dietitian and nutrition coach in Ottawa, says excess weight can be detrimental to workers with jobs requiring physical exertion, such as firefighting, policing Excess weight or window cleaning.

It can also affect positions like those can be of a cashier or waitress. An employee who has to stand at a cash register for detrimental to eight hours a day is “not going to be able to be at that job very long, because it is workers with just physically impossible,” Charlebois says, referring to the strain on the feet, jobs requiring knee joints and ankle joints.

“It predisposes you to a lot of other physical problems,” adds Kim McClelland, a registered nurse and wellness coordinator exertion. with the Toronto Police Service (TPS).

Obese workers take more time off from work and have more diseases. “They are more tired, they take more breaks, they can’t concentrate.”

Ian Janssen, Ph.D., professor in kinesiology and health studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, co-authored a study published in 2011 that found obese workers have a 40 to 49 per cent higher risk of occupational injury.

“Surprisingly, this related more to sedentary injuries that happen in more sedentary occupations,” Dr. Janssen says, citing repetitive strain and lower back pain as among the common ailments reported by the obese. “There is more increased likelihood of other illnesses and disabilities as well, even the flu. So that means persons with obesity are going to be potentially away from work more often.”

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Obesity has been on the rise in Canada over the past few decades. In 1985, less than 10 per cent of the population was clinically overweight. By 2004, the level leaped to more than 20 per cent in every province and territory except British Columbia and Quebec, according to Statistics Canada.

In 2005, there were more than two million obese workers aged 18 to 64 in the country, 21 per cent of whom were older than 55. Men in the top-quarter income bracket were more likely to be overweight than other men were.

EQUAL TREATMENT Forhan says the safety risks that obesity poses often depend on the job itself. “There are a lot of workers with obesity who actually could be very fit, strong and quite capable,” Forhan says. “When the risk starts to come in is when there is a disconnection between the person’s body size and shape and the workspace and demands of the job.”

An employee’s size might be incompatible with the required equipment or safety gear, and chronic health conditions like heart disease or high blood pressure could be dangerous in a job that involves physical exertion. So how can employers deal with this issue without being discriminatory?

“You need to be delicate, obviously, about the situation,” Dr. Janssen advises. “Just as you might accommodate somebody who is short or tall, you need to accommodate the person that might have a weight issue in the same way.”

Forhan agrees. “It is a matter of having a really good conversation with the employee about what their needs are,” she says, “in terms of being able to do their job safely.”

Dr. Janssen recommends making workplaces more health-conscious by allowing employees to stand during meetings, providing healthier choices in cafeterias and company lunches, offering subsidized gym memberships and permitting extra break time for exercise.

Charlebois believes that every employer should have access to a registered dietitian. “You should be able to take the receipt and put it through your medical insurance” — similar to claims for eyeglasses and dental, she says.

McClelland reports that the police service has a holistic nutritionist on staff. Other programs include educating police-force employees on the real cause of obesity, fatigue management and mental health.

“The more comprehensive they are, the more likely they are to have an impact,” Dr. Janssen says of corporate wellness programs, adding that staff feedback and evaluation of these programs are also important.

Whichever option an employer takes to address workplace obesity, McClelland says the focus should be on preventing and solving the problem, because “obesity is a symptom.”

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Jeff Cottrill is editorial assistant of

ohs canada.

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Workers Without Borders

By Jean Lian

T

emporary- and foreign-worker safety was high on the agenda of oh&s regulators who spoke at the plenary session of Safety 2014 in Orlando, Florida on June 10.

David Michaels, assistant secretary of labour for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in Washington, D.C., identified temporary-worker safety as an area the OSHA was working on, while Dr. John Howards, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), also in D.C., pointed to the need to beef up safety in the global workforce after the factory collapse in Bangladesh.

“There is a lot of temporary workers in the United States right now. If you look at the recovery we are going through, the fastest-growing sector in the economy is temporary workers,” Dr. Michaels said.

Temporary workers have a higher risk of injury: they are new to a jobsite and hold the most hazardous jobs, and host employers are least likely to devote resources to train temporary workers fully. “And so we see, week after week, what we call these first-day fatalities: workers who get to a job and they are killed on the first days. This is a very big issue right now,” Dr. Michaels said, pointing to the language barrier as a reason frequently cited by employers who fail to train their workers.

The OSHA is taking a national initiative to address this issue and stressing to employers the importance of providing training to workers in a language and vocabulary that they can understand. In May, the OSHA partnered with the American Staffing Association (ASA) to beef up protections to temporary employees. “Through this alliance with the ASA, we will increase outreach to staffing agencies and host employers and provide information and education that is viRAISING THE BAR Following a deadly explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas in 2013, a federal working group released a report in May, recommending ways to improve chemical-plant safety.

“We are very much focused on improving our processing safety management regulations,” David Michaels, assistant secretary of labour for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), said at Safety 2014. The report is the result of an executive order issued by the president of the United States, instructing the OSHA, the Environmental Protection Agency and Homeland Security to work together to improve chemical facilities following the disaster in West.

Permissible exposure limits are also under review, as many occupational exposure limits date back to the 1960s.

“One permissible exposure limit we really want to change sooner is silica,” Dr. Michaels said. “Workers are heavily exposed to silica, especially the construction industry.”

The OSHA has put information on its website comparing federal permissible exposure limits to those in California.

“We have also put up a great website helping employers select safer chemicals.”

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tal to protecting temporary workers,” Dr. Michaels said.

Worker safety on the international front is also a focus of the NIOSH’s prevention efforts. On May 7, the NIOSH held a meeting in Washington, D.C. to explore projects that strengthen workplace safety in Bangladesh. Attendees at the meeting included representatives from the Embassy of Bangladesh, the United States Department of Labor, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the International Occupational Hygiene Association and the American Society of Safety Engineers.

Dr. Howard said the NIOSH was pleased to join in the effort to raise the level of safety of garment workers in Bangladesh. “Even so, we need to ask ourselves — can we do more?” he questioned. “Is there something we can do to address these same safety and health issues across the global workforce? In other words, how can we achieve global safety sustainability?”

He called for the need for greater transparency on how multinational business enterprises report their performances.

SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING Traditionally, audited financial reports furnished by both profit-making and non-profit organizations provide information relating to the firms’ profitability, the liabilities and inventory they have on hand and their dividends paid out.

But over the past two decades, sustainability reporting has become more prevalent for American and European multinational enterprises. According to the Carbon Disclosure Project, an international, not-for-profit organization that collects environmental data on behalf of investors, more than half of the companies listed on the world’s 31 largest stock exchanges publish some environmental, social or governance data in sustainability reports.

Integrating sustainability reporting into the practices of multinational organizations and their global supply-chains could serve as a vehicle to raise the level of safety for workers throughout the world, Dr. Howard noted.

That said, some challenges need to be overcome. For multinational organizations that want to integrate safety into their sustainability reports, there is no widely accepted definition of safety and health sustainability, nor any standardized way to report oh&s sustainability. Furthermore, workforce safety and health is not included in sustainability indices that make comparisons across firms, such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices.

“The continued absence of workforce safety and health as a critical performance metric in the sustainability indices of global investment-rating companies means that the voice of safety is not being heard as loudly as it should be in the new globalized economic order of extended supply chains,” Dr. Howard said. He concluded his presentation by calling on all organizations to consider the safety and well-being of workers as part of a sustainable business practice.

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Jean Lian is editor of

ohs canada.

Product Highlights Below are some recently launched products showcased at Safety 2014, held in Orlando, Florida from June 8 to 11. More than 4,000 safety professionals attended the event, which featured products from some 500 exhibitors.

ILLUMAGEAR: THE HALO LIGHT The Halo Light™ is a patented 360° personal active safety system that attaches to any hard hat and emits a ring of light in four modes: halo, hi-alert, task and dim. Apart from enabling the wearer to see and be seen 400 metres away in all directions, it also illuminates the task area out to the visual periphery. It recently won the Core77 Design Award for Professional Equipment.

WINTER WALKING: ICEGRIPS ROTORS ICEGRIPS® ROTORS is a versatile iceand snow-walking device that allows workers to move from indoors to the outdoors without putting on and taking off their traction gear. With the rotors closed, the traction spikes hide up inside the sole, suited for indoor or dry surfaces. When transitioning from indoor to outdoor or slippery surfaces, the rotors can be pulled out and flipped over using one’s fingers or the supplied adjustment tool, with the spikes facing down to offer traction for slippery and icy conditions.

GLOVE GUARD: GOGGLE GUARD CLIP Launched in January, the new Goggle Guard Clip is a fast and convenient way to keep safety goggles securely held to a hard hat. The clip has been tested to fit a variety of hard hats and will fit both full-brim and cap-style hats. The Goggle Guard clip also features a clip that can hold pens or pencils.

BULWARK: IQ SERIES Bulwark debuted its iQ Series of flameresistant comfort knits and wovens at the show. The series features the use of polyester that has been treated to protect it from melting, enabling it to be used in making flame-resistant apparel without compromising the wearer’s safety. Lightweight, comfort, breathability and moisture-wicking properties are among the characteristics of the iQ Series.

3M™ AND DEUS™: ESCAPE AND RESCUE PRODUCTS

WELLS LAMONT: SUPER GREEN GLOVES

This fall-protection rescue system, launched in 2013, is now reintroduced, featuring compact and lightweight harness lines that come in three different sizes. 3M™ has partnered with DEUS™ to offer the 3000 Series devices, which can be used to evacuate people safely from heights without the need for re-rigging between descents, because 3M™ and DEUS™ 3000 Series devices operate in both directions. Each device is an all-in-one, all-purpose work-and-rescue package.

Due to the frequency of backhand injury among oil-rig workers, Wells Lamont has incorporated impact padding as a new feature of its Super Green Gloves. The gloves, which are made in Canada, were recently launched in the United States.

HONEYWELL: WIRELESS GAS DETECTION

AMERICAN RED CROSS: TEAM FIRST AID

Honeywell has developed the ConneXt Safety Solutions — a real-time, wireless gasdetection system. Real-time connectivity offers the ability to detect gas leaks more quickly, know the concentration and indicate where to look first when searching for exposed workers. Honeywell ConneXt can be scaled to suit various business needs and comes in three versions: ConneXt Pack, ConneXt Plus and ConneXt Pro.

Team First Aid Exercises, touted as a first in workplace safety training, helps trained individuals review the lifesaving skills that they have learned and practise delivering them as a team with co-workers. American Red Cross also announced its partnership with Prestan to sell the new Prestan Ultralite Manikin for emergency-preparedness training.

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2014

GLOBAL

PETROLEUM

SHOW

Tracking Safety in the Oil and Gas Sector

By Jeff Cottrill

E

nsuring safety and efficiency in Canada’s booming oil and gas sector can help minimize the costs of lost-time incidents (LTI) arising from occupational accidents or injuries. This was the focus of a seminar by David Kempling, health and safety coordinator with Calgary-based consulting firm Irwin’s Safety and Industrial Services, at the Global Petroleum Show at Calgary’s Stampede Park on June 11.

“You have to pay for safety,” Kempling said. “Because these incidents cost millions upon millions to industry, you can develop the necessary safety protocols and oversights to mitigate these risks. In fact, it has spawned a relatively new industry.”

Two categories of potential financial costs that can come out of LTIs are direct costs and indirect or hidden costs. The former includes medical fees, lost wages, fines and higher insurance premiums, while the latter are costs relating to lost production and lost efficiency, including administrative time, extra paperwork, reduced worker morale, legal fees and product replacement.

“The average cost of a lost-time incident in oil and gas extraction is about $200,000,” said Kempling, pointing to statistics from the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Washington, D.C. The average ratio of indirect to direct costs, which is five to one, translates to a total cost of $1.2 million per LTI. He cited a recent incident in which a chunk of welding slag fell from about 60 feet and settled on a tiny hole at the top of a rig, setting it afire. Apart from dealing with the fire, evacuation and lost man hours, “we had a crew boilermaker, [who] was counting on a critical and hard-to-source piece of equipment, now unable to complete a critical path job in the allotted time.” The rig that was destroyed cost more than $100,000.

“But what if you could extract an unexpected service from your safety provider? What if this budgetary ‘necessary evil’ could translate into a measurable return on investment?” He suggests that oil and gas companies track their efficiency with the goal of maximizing work time, while minimizing inefficient time resulting from safety incidents.

One way to do this is through having teams of trained observers monitor employees and project likely lost work time from potential safety incidents, as compared to the usual rate of productivity. For instance, Irwin’s Safety provides safety watches, spark watches and air-quality technicians to ensure that the atmosphere is safe and act as key links in the emergency-response chain should an incident occur. The technicians are also trained to deal with employees working in confined spaces.

Downtime resulting from LTIs can often be attributed to facility owners and safety providers, due to the procurement of needed equipment, permitting processes, gas testing and other possible variables. “As partners in efficiency, we want to ensure that we are the last reason the job is not moving forward in a timely manner.”

Kempling paints a hypothetical scenario in which an LTI occurs in an oil firm employing 300 people in 12-hour shifts at $75 per hour during a turnaround, totalling $22,500 an hour.

Following the LTI, the company loses one work hour per em 50

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ployee per day in efficiency, totalling $945,000 in wasted wages over a six-week period. Assuming that it typically produces 50,000 barrels per day, Kempling estimates that the company loses an additional $13,125,000 in revenue on top of that.

The main factor in turnaround efficiency following an LTI is the time it takes to get back to production. In the same scenario, Kempling projects potential savings of more than $7 million if product starts flowing two days earlier. An improvement in efficiency of half an hour per day per worker could equate to more than $472,000 in savings from lost wages.

Another key to transforming losses from safety incidents into regained assets is attitude. Threats to safety culture include production pressure, complacency, normalization of carelessness and the tolerance of inadequate systems and resources. But these can be transformed into positive traits like committed safety leadership, vigilance, accountability and resiliency. Kempling defines the latter in this context as the quality to respond effectively to changing demands, in order to manage potential or emerging risks.

“We have all written safety management into our budgets, and we will continue to do so for as long as there is industry,” Kempling says. “Safety subcontractors can be used to increase efficiency, especially during the turnaround process, without costing you an extra dime.”

Jeff Cottrill is editorial assistant of

ohs canada.

TRAINING IN VIRTUAL REALITY Virtual-reality (VR) simulation has become the norm for safety training in the aerospace and military sectors, and the oil and gas industry is just starting to catch up. But employers need to know exactly what they want and how to use VR systems properly to get results, according to Lesley de Repentigny, president and chief executive officer of driving-safety firm DriveWise in Barrie, Ontario.

“Simulation has become affordable to utilize,” de Repentigny says in her seminar, Virtual Reality Simulation Drives Effective Learning Programs in Operational or High Risk Occupations, which she presented at the Global Petroleum Show in Calgary on June 11.

De Repentigny, who has worked with VR simulation in various industries since 1980, recommends that companies define exactly what they need so that their acquired VR systems are relevant to their unique safety issues. “All occupations don’t have the same risks,” she notes. As such, buying any random product could be “like trying to fit a square box into a round hole.”

Aside from a standardized training environment and ability to analyze data, the advantage of VR training for employees in risky work environments is a hands-on learning experience that allows trainees to make mistakes without dire consequences. “In simulation, you can do it over and over, and no one is hurt,” de Repentigny says.

For example, a driver who is hired in the summer has missed the chance to experience the challenges of winter driving. “But in a simulator, it can be winter anytime.”

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FLAME-RESISTANT WORKWEAR Workrite introduces an exciting new line of dual hazard knit polo and t-shirts featuring a new fabric TenCate Tecasafe® Plus. They’re engineered to withstand industrial laundering, providing excellent wear life, comfort and after wash appearance. The shirts have completely new styling, meet HRC 2 and are certified to NFPA 2112.

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FOR BURNS, THERE IS BURNFREE, NEW FROM DENTEC SAFETY SPECIALISTS There are gels, dressings and fire blankets for first aid use on minor burns including sunburn, cuts, scrapes and abrasions all with better heat absorption.

Phone: 888-533-6832 www.dentecsafety.com

GOGGLE GUARD The new Goggle Guard™ clip is a fast and convenient way to keep safety goggles securely held to a hard hat. Made from a high quality plastic, the clip snaps to the brim of most hard hats and some bump caps. Goggle Guard™ clip also features a pencil clip.

Customize your clips with a company name, logo, contact information or even your own safety slogan!

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TAKING ESCAPE AND RESCUE TO NEW HEIGHTS - 3M™ AND DEUS™ CONTROLLED DESCENT DEVICE When things go wrong 500 feet in the air, you want a quick, simple way to get yourself or another person down safely. 3M offers real solutions for escape and rescue, built around descent technology that is innovative and designed for ease of use. Each of the 3M™ and DEUS™ 3000 Series devices provides simple, hands-free operation, quadruple-redundant brakes to guard against free fall, “carry-it-with-you-always” portability, and rugged construction. When lives are on the line, trust 3M and DEUS for personal escape and rescue.

Visit 3M.ca/Safety for more information.

SIMPLY REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY Introducing ALTAIR® 2X Gas Detectors from MSA. The ALTAIR 2X Platform drastically minimizes total cost of ownership, increases durability and delivers enhanced worker safety, compliance and traceability. ALTAIR 2XP Detectors introduce the world’s first stand-alone bump test – no calibration accessories or bottled gas required to complete a daily bump test.

To learn more, visit MSAsafety.com/ALTAIR2X.

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TIME OUT

A PUCK FOR A JOB: A company in Biggar, Saskatche- rotting garbage in the city’s dump continues to grow as the

wan has a rare criterion for candidates seeking to join the firm as welders, drafters and administrators — they must want to join the senior hockey team. After going for three years without a hockey team, the town is finally getting one. The Sask Valley Hockey League is looking for players, coaches, managers and supporting officers, the Toronto Sun reported on May 28. The company, which makes steel storage tanks, issued a job advertisement that reads, “If your dream is to continue to play hockey while establishing a career, we encourage you to consider relocation to Biggar and employment with AGI Envirotank.” Only in Canada.

ELECTORAL ROLLOVER: Ontario Premier Kathleen

Wynne might have been criticized for driving a tractor dangerously, but that did not stop her from a majority election victory. In the lead-up to the provincial election on June 12, the premier and agriculture minister appeared in a photo op in Paris, Ontario driving a tractor with a passenger sitting next to her. The Progressive Conservatives (PC) were quick to point out that having more than one person in a tractor cab is a farm safety no-no, the National Post reports. But Wynne is not the only one to ride a tractor the wrong way: last September, PC leader Tim Hudak was similarly pictured at the helm of a tractor with a farmer by his side. That said, the Liberal leader may have one up on Hudak. In one image taken on the Paris farm, the premier is jumping in the dirt while donning red gumboots.

FURRY ENCOUNTERS: In the world of stuffed animals, bears are furry creatures that make one feel warm and fuzzy.

But for many outdoor workers toiling in the Canadian brush, bears pose a real threat to their personal safety. A cyclist riding down a popular trail in Jasper, Alberta in late May experienced this firsthand when a grizzly bear began chasing him down the path, QMI Agency reports. As the creature closed in to sink its teeth into his flesh, it bit on something far more noxious — a canister of bear spray stowed inside the man’s backpack. Terrifying as the bear encounter was, the biker can at least take heart in the fact that the bear spray worked.

BARF TAX: If riding in a taxi makes you queasy, you may want to think twice about cabbing it. Riders in North Bay, Ontario who puke inside a cab will now have to cough up a hefty fine at the end of their rides, following a revised bylaw that came into effect in May, the North Bay Nugget reports.

North Bay is the latest city in North America to join Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver and Chicago, which charge passengers for barfing in the backseat. For those with weaker stomachs or who would like to avoid getting behind the wheel after partying, having a barf bag in the pocket may come in handy.

SMOKE CITY: Think Iqaluit, and images associated with the desolate beauty of the great white north — tundra, rock and snow — come to mind. But Iqaluit may be acquiring a new image associated with a local landmark, which residents fondly nicknamed “dumpcano”. The mound of smelly, 54

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Municipal Council struggles to fund an incinerator to deal effectively with waste management, the National Post reports.

The billowing smoke has led the city’s chief medical officer to issue a public health advisory. The dump fire is also draining the resources of the community fire department. The town council reportedly approved a recommendation on May 20 to quit trying to fight the fire and simply let the flames die out.

Apparently, fire crews dumped three-million litres of water on dumpcano in 2010, but it continued to burn for 36 days.

TOOL ON THE LOOSE: It was not just another day in

the Big Apple for passers-by near a construction site in New York City on May 27. A woman walking past the work crew tearing up a Manhattan sidewalk that day was struck in the leg by a flying buzz saw, which left gashes on her thigh, NBC 4 New York reports. The three-foot blade travelled 100 metres through the air and whizzed past a man’s head before striking the woman’s limb. The blade was reportedly used to cut concrete for a water-main repair project. Police instructed the company to hold off work involving saws and blades until the investigation into the cause of the incident had concluded.

MR. PRESIDENT: The fan base of the president of the United States can be very broad indeed. A man who claimed that he had an appointment with president Barack Obama stripped naked outside the White House fence and fought with officers after being denied entry on May 23. The Toronto Sun reported that the man approached uniformed Secret Service officers at a security checkpoint in the afternoon and proceeded to do the full monty, after his identification was rejected because it was from a foreign country. The man was arrested and charged with assault and indecent exposure.

FAST-FOOD MELTDOWN: Hell hath no fury like a

customer scorned. This was what employees at a Burger King in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina learned, when a customer threatened to shoot up the joint after she received a stale Cinnabon, AZCentral.com reported on May 19. Two friends of the irate customer joined in the fracas. The trio left the outlet, but the woman returned shortly afterwards, threatening to shoot everyone inside. Police were unable to catch up with the suspect, who fled in a car. Cashiers at fast-food chains may receive directions on what to do when held at gunpoint for the money inside the register, but perhaps safety protocols should start addressing the issue of stale-bun stick-ups.

KINDERGARTEN COP: A police demonstration given to a Chinese kindergarten class on May 29 is an example of what not to do in a safety talk. During the presentation in the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, the officer’s gun went off, injuring four adults and one child, The Associated Press reports. The bullet shot into the ground, sending sparks and concrete flying and hitting bystanders. It might be a good idea to give police officers better training on gun safety before walking into a classroom full of kids.

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