Also called health and safety committee, due diligence, internal responsibility system
What is a joint health and safety committee?
A committee of workers and managers, required by law at most workplaces, that inspects and raises safety problems.
What else it is called
- Other names
- health and safety committee, due diligence, internal responsibility system
- In French
- comité de santé et de sécurité au travail
Related entries
Understanding joint health and safety committee
Occupational health and safety is provincial in Canada, and every province requires a joint committee once a workplace reaches a certain size, with smaller sites usually needing a health and safety representative instead. The thresholds, the certification requirements and the meeting frequency differ by province, so the rule that applies is the one where the plant is.
The committee carries out regular workplace inspections, reviews incidents, and makes written recommendations to which the employer must respond within a set time. Minutes are kept and posted. Those documents are evidence, and after a serious incident they are what an inspector reads first: a committee that raised a hazard repeatedly with no employer response is the clearest possible record of a failure of due diligence.
That phrase is the one directors should know. Canadian law places a duty on employers and on individual supervisors and officers to take every reasonable precaution, and the Criminal Code was amended to allow criminal liability for failures that cause death or serious injury.
In practice
Read your own committee minutes from the last year. Recommendations with no recorded employer response are the exposure, and fixing that is paperwork rather than capital.
Frequently asked
At what size do we need a committee?
It varies by province, with twenty employees a common threshold and a single health and safety representative required at smaller sites. Check your own province’s occupational health and safety regulation, because the number, the certification rules and the meeting frequency all differ.
What is due diligence?
The legal standard requiring an employer, and individual supervisors and officers, to take every reasonable precaution to protect workers. It is demonstrated through records: training, inspections, maintenance, and acting on what the committee raised.