The Road to Zero

Interview with the Hon. Steve Mahoney

INTERVIEW BY KRISTA OULTON WELSH

The Hon. Mr. Mahoney is passionate, committed, and has the courage to unabashedly portray workplace realities, and demand that we as a society do better. Your Workplace supports his mission to make Ontario (and perhaps Canada) the healthiest and safest place to work in the world.

YW: What was keeping you awake at night that prompted you to start this innovative, award-winning, and impossible to forget
advertising campaign?

SM: We continue to see flat-line numbers in the area of fatalities. We’re seeing reductions in our lost time injuries, quite successful actually, but, in the two years that I’ve been in the job, we still continue seeing two [employees] a week being killed. So what keeps me awake at night is that we must start seeing really good results, particularly in the area of fatalities. If we don’t see results, we’ll need to question whether or not the philosophy that we have (branding the WSIB, increasing awareness in society, etc.) whether or not it is working.

YW: What is the brand image of the WSIB?

SM: Well, our brand image is prevention more than anything. My message is about responsibility and putting in place the health and safety regime that will ensure that these kinds of things stop happening. We want to create a habit of safety and create a habit of awareness. And that’s a mandate that’s changed in recent years. The old Worker Compensation Board was a bureaucratic nightmare for employers, for workers, for government. I was an MPP and heard nothing but complaints in the legislature about the issue. That’s changed.

YW: Whose responsibility is it to put in the regime?

SM: Both employers and workers, everybody. Society, I would argue. That’s my whole point, why we have gone so public with this young worker social marketing awareness. Going to groups like this, speaking to people, making them understand that they do have an organization that cares about the work that they are doing, but also telling them they have to do more.

The Minister gave us the target to reduce our lost time injuries by 20% over four years. We hit the mark. We’ve set our own new target in the next four years, “upping the anti,” that’s a reduction of an additional 35%. I don’t think it’s the WSIB that’s reducing; it’s the workplace. It’s the employer, the workers, the unions, everybody that’s involved under the leadership of the WSIB, and under the leadership of the Ministry of Labour.

YW: The crux of the campaign seems to be more about changing society than necessarily about changing specific workplace practices.

SM: Well, we already have the laws. We have the Occupational Health and Safety Act [OHSA], the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act [WSIA]. They’re already in place. When people break the law, they get charged. One of the unique things about the compensation system in this country is that the workers give up the right to sue their employer in the case of an injury, an illness or fatality. Families can’t sue them if they are covered under WSIB. But in return for that, the quid pro quo, is they get no-fault insurance, health care benefits, income replacement, return to work, labour market re-entry, re-training, whatever is required, they get it as an injured worker.