Among the key points made in a recent update to the Ontario Business Coalition by the Ministry of Labour's Chief Prevention Officer, George Gritziotis, were the following:

According to its website, the College is presently:

COCA Treasurer, Robert LeChien was recently appointed to the College's Roster of Adjudicators. Whether you support or oppose the College, you have to agree this is a sound appointment.

The College is currently hiring a Manager of Investigations and Hearings, an Accountant and a Manager of Standards.

A number of ratio reviews have been completed and others are underway, following the ambitious schedule of reviews that the College published some time ago.

Opposition to the establishment of the College of Trades appears to be growing in the construction industry as a number of local mixed trade associations have publicly added their names to the list of contrarians. Awareness about the College in the other three sectors (motive power, industrial and service) appears to be extremely low at the present time.

Against a backdrop of significant opposition from a group of construction employers associations that's reported on with regularity in the DCN, the College is beginning to garner some positive press in the mainstream media.

College of Trades Chair Ron Johnson and Ontario Construction Employers Coalition Chair Sean Reid are scheduled to make separate presentations at COCA's Board of Directors meeting on September 25th.

It's expected that opposition will mount even further when the College begins to assess fees in 2013.

The Premier has issued a writ for by-elections in the ridings of Kitchener-Waterloo and Vaughan on Thursday September 6th. The by-election in Kitchener-Waterloo was precipitated by the resignation of longtime PC MPP Elizabeth Witmer who has subsequently been appointed as the new Chair of the WSIB. Additionally, a by-election will also be held in Vaughan after the recent and sudden resignation of longtime Liberal MPP Greg Sorbara for personal reasons.

In Kitchener-Waterloo, a full slate of candidates has already been nominated including:

In Vaughan, the following candidates have been nominated so far:

If the governing Liberals win both seats they will recapture a majority government in the Legislature.

Generally speaking, by-elections are traditionally referendums on the governing party, but with so much at stake with these two by-elections, heightened focus will be paid not only to the current government agenda but largely on local issues. While the Liberals feel confident recapturing their seat in Vaughan, Kitchener-Waterloo remains the one to watch as it has quickly become a three-horse race. That being said, by-elections are funny beasts, anything can happen.

The WSIB has begun its public awareness campaign encouraging independent operators to pre-register before January 2, 2012. The campaign includes very straight forward messages targeted to independent operators working in construction stating that the law has changed and that they must register with the WSIB.

We anticipate significant backlash early in the New Year when unaware independent operators learn for the first time that they are required to pay WSIB premiums.

 

The WSIB will begin consulting with stakeholders with regard to how it addresses the recommendations contained in the Funding Fairness report.

 

It's expected that the WSIB will announce the premium rates for 2013 towards the end of September. Readers of COCA's monthly newsletter know that, in the wake of the Arthurs Report, we have been alerting contractors for possible rate increases of between 5% and 10%.

 

The WSIB recently initiated an internal review of its appeals program. A consultation document titled "Modernization of the WSIB's Appeals Program" has been published to bring focus to the consultations. The current system has a backlog of almost 5,000 appeals and the wait time for an appeal to be assigned to an Appeals Resolution Officer is six months.

The timeline proposed in the consultation document for employers to submit a Response Form to a worker's Objection Form provides is unreasonably short (officially 14 days but practically only 8 or 9 business days); this does not give employers adequate time review the access package, conduct the necessary interviews and complete the response; COCA will be strongly objecting to this in its submission.

To discourage frivolous appeals, Objection Forms require the objecting employer or worker to sign the form to confirm they understand the "downside risk" of the process.

COCA's WSIB-OH&S Committee recently reviewed the consultation document as well as the comprehensive submission made by Michael Zacks of the Office of the Employer Advisor; the Committee fully supports the recommendations made in the OEA submission.

COCA believes that it's time for the appeals program to be streamlined and that the new process must be fair to both workers and employers, that reasonable timelines be provided for the exchange of information and that the rules be strictly enforced to avoid unnecessary delay.

 

A Consultation Secretariat has been established within the WSIB to oversee the ongoing renewal of WSIB policies in accordance with the policy renewal framework published by the WSIB some time ago. The consultation model that will be used by the secretariat will be similar to the one used by Professor Harry Arthurs, the independent chair for the Funding Review.

For 2012-13 the following policies have been identified for review:

The WSIB has engaged former Deputy Minister of Labour and former Interim CEO of the Workers Compensation Board of Ontario, Jim Thomas, to serve as the independent chair for this round of consultations and he has met with the Ontario Business Coalition to outline his mandate and the process and he has published a consultation paper. COCA will be responding.

 

The Ministry of Labour's monthly Report to the Provincial Labour Management Health and Safety Committee for August 2012 reported one fatality in the construction industry in the month of July as a result of a worker being pinned underneath a concrete pump truck that rolled over. The fatality was in the residential sector. There were 10 critical injuries, 5 fall-related (three multi-level falls, one a ladder fall and one a scaffold fall), one was due to heat stress and four were struck by equipment.

To the end of July there have been 10 fatalities in the construction industry in 2012 versus 12 in 2011 and 75 criticals versus 74 a year ago.

As we have stated before, there is much work to be done to improve our industry's health and safety performance to ensure every worker returns home safely every night of the week.

In a recent communication to stakeholders the Construction Sector Council (CSC)reported the following:

More information is available on the CSC's website.