By MorinvilleNews.com Staff
Edmonton – Albertans will soon be able to see the occupational health and safety (OHS) records of potential employers or contractors, but the province has just unveiled the template upon which the information will rest.
Alberta’s Minister of Employment and Immigration Thomas Lukaszuk said the move is part of a ten-point plan by his department to provide better transparency and accountability for occupational health and safety in the province.
“We want to give people a sense of what is coming as this is new territory for safety information in Canada,” Lukaszuk said in a press release on the template. “It will be much more than what any other jurisdiction is providing.”
When the system goes live, Albertans will be able to see information about worksite injuries and fatalities involving the majority of Alberta’s WCB insured employers.
Information for each employer will include:
- Number of lost-time claims
- Estimated number of employees
- Lost-time claim rate
- Number of fatalities
- If the employer holds a Certificate of Recognition (COR)
- Industry and province wide lost-time claim rates for comparison purposes
Lukaszuk’s ministry came under fire earlier this year in the Auditor General’s report, which was critical of the number of open OHS non-compliance orders and a general lack of systems to handle enforcement of OHS violations.
After reviewing its own records, the Department found that many of the 63 orders the Auditor General found open were still open because of administrative error. Quite simply, the files had not been updated in the department’s computer system to reflect compliance.
Although disputing the report’s numbers, Lukazuk said he agreed with the Auditor General’s assessment that there was no clear plan as to just when the Department’s employees should escalate from education to warning and from warning to fining. Something Lukaszuk said he’d begun to address prior to the report. The Minister directed his Department to have a process put in place over the summer as part of a general overhaul of the department.
The decision to make employer records available online is part of the department’s desire to provide greater transparency with respect to OHS information.
The template can be found online at www.employment.alberta.ca/employerrecords. Actual employer records will be at the same location when they are released later this fall.
