Alberta introduces changes to occupational health and safety legislation

The Government of Alberta’s Bill 47: Ensuring Safety and Cutting Red Tape Act, 2020 introduced changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS Act) that will come into effect December 1, 2021.  In this update, we break down the key features of the amendments.

Key features of the OHS Act amendments

• Employer responsibilities:  
  
  • An employer’s duty to ensure the health and safety of any other person at or near the worksite is limited to those who could be materially affected by identifiable and controllable worksite hazards. 
  • While workers must still be adequately trained to perform work in a healthy and safe manner, the amendments remove the requirement of employers to conduct training before performing a work activity. 
  • In addition to serious injuries and incidents, employers are required to report and investigate serious illnesses. 
• Reprisals:  
  • The amendments rename “discriminatory action” to “disciplinary action,” specifying that no person can take a disciplinary action against a worker who acts in compliance with the OHS Act.  
  • Complaints to OHS officers must be filed within 180 days of the disciplinary action. 
  • OHS officers can now dismiss disciplinary action complaints of questionable merit before starting an investigation. 
  • Unionized workers must resolve their disciplinary action complaint through their collective agreement process and no longer have the option to pursue a complaint through an OHS officer. 
• Right to refuse work:
  • Workers have the right to refuse work if there is an “undue hazard,” a new term introduced by the amendments to the OHS Act that means a hazard that poses a serious and immediate threat to the health and safety of a person.  In exercising this right, workers also must now reasonably ensure their work refusal does not endanger anyone else.  
• Health and safety committees, representatives, and programs:
  • Employers with 20 or more workers are still required to establish a health and safety program; however, specific requirements of the program are removed, including: the size, composition, quorum, term of office, frequency of meetings, and training requirements for health and safety committees.
  • Health and safety committees and representatives are no longer required to be on worksites with multiple employers and a prime contractor, such as construction sites.  On these sites, the prime contractor will be required to have a representative to coordinate health and safety issues between employers and workers. 

Takeaways

The circumstances leading to the right to refuse work are reduced in scope and limited to situations where serious and immediate threats to the health and safety of a worker are present.  Previously, the right to refuse work was available for any dangerous condition that posed a danger to the worker, with no protection against other workers who may be endangered as a result of the refusal to work. 

The new provisions regarding disciplinary actions provide OHS officers more authority to dismiss frivolous complaints and ensure complaints are addressed in a timely manner. Where a disciplinary action was taken against a worker, the onus of establishing that such action was taken for legitimate reasons remains on the employer.

Lastly, employers will now have more flexibility in training workers, implementing health and safety programs, and establishing health and safety committees that are tailored to specific workplace needs.