SAFETY CONCERNS

NDP critic asks: ‘What exactly is the value of a life of a worker to this government?’

Cuts to a labour ministry office endanger workers, critics say,

Funding cuts to the office tasked with preventing workplace deaths will make workers less safe on the job, opposition critics argued at Queen’s Park on Tuesday.

“No one person should go to work in the province of Ontario and not know if they’re coming home at the end of the day to their families,” said NDP labour critic Wayne Gates during question period.

“What exactly is the value of a life of a worker to this government?”

It comes as the Ministry of Labour’s prevention office — which is tasked with preventing workplace injury, illness and death in the province — faces $16 million in cuts this year.

The cuts emerge despite the fact it is not taxpayer-funded and does not impact the government’s bottom line.

The office’s costs are covered by reimbursements from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.

Meanwhile, Labour Minister Laurie Scott said Tuesday an extra $512,000 will be dedicated to health and safety

enforcement this year.

“We had important decisions to make putting people as a priority,” Scott said.

“We have looked at health and safety programs. We have worked with the partners that deliver these health and safety programs.

“There are other avenues of revenue for them to provide the programs.

“But we have, as I said, again, increased our enforcement budget by half a million dollars,” she said.

The bulk of the cuts will affect research projects on issues such as occupational disease, as well as the province’s independent health and safety associations, which provide ministryapproved training and support to workplaces across Ontario.

Earlier this year, the Ministry of Labour announced plans to reform training for workplace joint health and safety committees by allowing some of it to be completed online to “reduce the burden on business while maintaining standardized high-quality training accessible to all workers across Ontario.”

“Slashing funding designed to protect workers, forcing training sessions online and creating unaccountable classes will make workers less safe,” Gates said.

Scott called “modernizing health and safety programs” a positive.

“We have the priority of the workers in mind in health and safety,” she said.

But Chris Buckley, head of the Ontario Federation of Labour, called the funding cuts “alarming.”

“(Doug Ford) professes to be there for the little guy, he professes to be there for the people,” he said.

“He’s got a very odd way of showing it.”

Rob Ellis became a health and safety advocate after his son David was killed in a bakery on his second day on the job.

His organization, MySafeWork, has provided workplace safety education to hundreds of thousands of students across the province.

Ellis told the Star he learned he will no longer receive government funding.

“This is concerning because we’re not told why these cutbacks are taking place and what will replace them,” he said.

“So I am really concerned about youth going out to work. “I am really concerned about our newcomers who we desperately need to fill in our trades.”

Ellis added, “We’re still excited about saving lives.

“But we’re disappointed that the Ontario government doesn’t feel it’s an important part of remaining competitive.”