Your rights and duties under OHS law

Every province and territory in Canada has an occupational health and safety act that applies to construction, and federally regulated workplaces have the Canada Labour Code. The details differ, but every one of these laws is built on the same foundation: employers must protect workers, and workers have rights that let them protect themselves. This lesson uses Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) and its Construction Projects regulation (O. Reg. 213/91) as the example, because that is the law on Kingsway Tower. If you work in another province, the names and section numbers will change but the ideas will not.

Knowing the law is not about memorizing section numbers. It is about knowing that you are entitled to training, information and protection, that you have duties of your own, and that you have a way to say no when a job is dangerous without losing your job for it.

The internal responsibility system

Canadian safety law rests on the internal responsibility system. The idea is that the people in the workplace, who know the work and the hazards best, are responsible for safety, each according to their authority and ability. The government inspector is a backstop who checks that the system is working, not the person who makes the site safe. On a construction project in Ontario, the law gives specific duties to five parties.

The phrase that appears again and again in Ontario's Act is that employers and supervisors must take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker. It is a high standard. It means a contractor cannot point to a rule it wrote and call the job done; it has to show that it trained people, supervised them, provided the right equipment and acted on hazards it knew about or should have known about.

Your three rights

Ontario's Act, like the laws in every province, gives workers three basic rights. Lawyers and inspectors refer to them all the time, and so should you.

Refusing unsafe work

The right to refuse is the most powerful right a worker has, and it comes with a process designed to get the hazard fixed quickly while protecting the worker who raised it. In Ontario, a worker may refuse work if they have reason to believe that equipment, the physical condition of the workplace, or workplace violence is likely to endanger them or another worker. The worker does not have to be certain; they need reason to believe. Some workers whose jobs are inherently dangerous, such as police and firefighters, have limits on this right, but construction workers do not.

On Kingsway Tower, the right was tested in Maya's third week. Dave asked her to carry pipe to the north side of the sixth floor, where the cover over a large mechanical opening had been moved by another trade and was lying beside the hole. Maya told Dave she would not work near the opening until it was covered or guarded. Dave looked, agreed, called Anika, and the opening was guarded within twenty minutes. There was no argument. That is the way the process is supposed to work: most refusals end at the first conversation, because the hazard is obvious once someone points it out.

Ontario's Act also prohibits reprisals. An employer may not dismiss, discipline, penalize, intimidate or threaten a worker for acting in compliance with the Act, including refusing unsafe work or reporting a hazard. A worker who believes they have faced a reprisal can file a complaint with the Ontario Labour Relations Board, or have a union file a grievance.

Your duties as a worker

Rights come with duties. Under Ontario's Act, a worker must work in compliance with the Act and regulations, use or wear the equipment, protective devices or clothing the employer requires, and report to the employer or supervisor any hazard, defect in equipment or contravention they know of. A worker must not remove or make ineffective any protective device, must not use equipment in a way that endangers anyone, and must not engage in pranks, contests, feats of strength, unnecessary running or rough and boisterous conduct. Workers can be charged and fined for breaking the law, although it is rare and usually involves deliberate or reckless behaviour.

Committees and representatives

The right to participate works through joint health and safety committees and health and safety representatives. In Ontario, a construction project where 20 or more workers are regularly employed and that is expected to last three months or more must have a joint health and safety committee, with at least half its members being workers chosen by the workers or their unions. Projects with six to 19 workers need a health and safety representative. On Kingsway Tower, the committee meets monthly, inspects the site, and makes written recommendations to Stonebridge, which must respond in writing.

For Maya, the committee is a way to raise issues that are bigger than a single hazard. When she noticed that the only route from the hoist to the washrooms on the upper floors went through an area where the masons were cutting block without dust control, she mentioned it to the worker member from her trade. The committee recommended a second route and wet cutting, and both were in place the next week.

Inspectors and enforcement

Ontario's Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development employs the inspectors who enforce the Act. Inspectors can enter a workplace at any time without a warrant, inspect, take samples and photographs, interview workers in private, and issue orders, including stop-work orders. Ministry inspectors investigate serious injuries and fatalities, work refusals and complaints, and run proactive inspection campaigns, for example on falls. Companies and individuals convicted of offences face fines, and since November 2025 inspectors can also issue administrative monetary penalties for some contraventions. Anyone can call the Ministry's Health and Safety Contact Centre to report a hazard.

Reporting injuries and workers' compensation

If Maya is hurt at work, even slightly, she reports it to Dave right away and gets first aid. The employer must report injuries that need health care beyond first aid, or that cause time off work, to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) within three days of learning about them, and must report critical injuries and fatalities to the Ministry immediately. Workers' compensation pays for health care and replaces lost wages for work-related injuries and illnesses, and in exchange workers generally cannot sue their employer. Early reporting matters: it gets the worker the right care, creates a record if a minor injury turns out to be serious, and helps the site fix the cause.

Some workers hide injuries because they are worried about their jobs, about being seen as careless, or about spoiling the site's safety record. A good contractor makes it clear that reporting is expected and never punished. A sprained wrist that is reported today is a minor first aid case; the same wrist hidden for a week and then reported may be a claim that is hard to prove, and the loose stair nosing that caused it is still waiting for the next person.

Questions every new worker can ask

Using your rights starts with simple questions. A new worker does not need to quote the law; asking the right questions on the first day tells you most of what you need to know about how seriously a contractor takes safety, and it shows your supervisor that you care about doing the job properly.

Maya asked Dave all six on her first morning. He answered most of them on the spot and walked her to the first aid station and the muster point himself. When she asked about the committee, he pointed her to the worker member from Northbridge, a second-year apprentice named Priya, who later became the person Maya went to with questions she felt awkward asking her foreman.