Employee Safety During the Pandemic | What is the Ontario Government doing?

Ontario is making essential workplaces across the province safer during the COVID-19 pandemic by:

• Redeploying more than 30 employment standards officers to help businesses understand and comply with health and safety requirements;
• Working with health and safety associations to deploy up to 30 specialists to support employers and workers in the field;
• Issuing health and safety guidance notes to support specific sectors;
• Doubling the capacity of Ontario's Health and Safety Call Centre from 25 to 50 phonelines;
• Providing job-protected leave under the Employment Standards Act for workers who need to self-isolate or care for a loved one because of COVID-19;
• Issuing a call to recently-retired inspectors who may be able and willing to return to their positions;
• Providing compliance assistance and enforcing the emergency orders issued under the Emergency Measures and Civil Protection Act.

In response to the outbreak of COVID-19, Ontario is extending construction hours for essential construction projects, like critical projects in the health care sector, to 24 hours a day. Work on new hospital builds, expansions, and COVID-19 assessment centres will be able to continue any time of the night or day in order to help accelerate the construction of these important projects and enable employers to take additional steps to protect the health and safety of workers on these job sites.

In a press release on April 8 2020, Monte McNaughton, Minister of Labour, Training and Skills Development, confirmed that, the Government “has conducted thousands of inspections and investigations across the province in March, and we will continue to conduct more in April.”