I'm moving on to page 9, part II of the Canada Labour Code, which focuses on occupational health and safety.
The labour program takes both proactive and reactive approaches to occupational health and safety. We proactively deal with high-risk industries to make sure they have the education and information needed to address their safety and health concerns. And we are reactive: according to the Canada Labour Code, our health and safety officers go in to investigate accidents, fatalities, and refusals to work and we render decisions and we ensure compliance with the Canada Labour Code.
Under the Canada Labour Code the employee has three fundamental rights: the right to know about every known or foreseeable health or safety hazard in the area where they work; the right to participate in identifying and correcting job-related health and safety concerns through their representatives and committees; and the right to refuse dangerous work. And if an employee in a federally regulated workplace refuses work, that is when a health and safety officer from the labour program comes in and assesses whether there is danger and renders a decision.
It's important to note that the area of occupational health and safety is a shared responsibility. The government is the regulator, setting the norms, providing education, doing the health and safety inspections, and issuing direction, but as a shared responsibility of the employers and the employees to have their health and safety committees and to undertake to have the best they can in a healthy and safe workplace.
Our health and safety code has us covering 1.2 million workers, including the federal public service.
We recently put in place a new quality assurance framework that ensures more consistency in decision-making across the country and focuses on service delivery and service excellence. It's a very active area. For example, in 2010-11, 3,400 occupational health and safety proactive interventions were finalized and 93 hazardous occurrence investigations were initiated and 82 completed. It is a key component of our work under the Canada Labour Code.
On the next page, page 10, labour standards, we talk about healthy, fair, and productive workplaces. This is the area of fairness. What are the fair hours of work and wages? What are the fair conditions for severance and dismissal? We're very active in this area as well.
We also recover unpaid wages for employees, and approximately 1,000 unjust dismissal complaints were resolved, many of them through newer alternative dispute resolution, proactively to avoid formal lawsuits, formal complaints.
You'll notice on this page that there have been good developments in recent years on the labour standards front. We have the compassionate care leave, which is administered by HRSDC, as well as extended paternity, parental, and reservist leave.
We cover approximately 820,000 workers, accounting for 6% of all non-public-administration employees, including banks, first nations, governments, and enterprises.
On page 11 are some of the additional business lines that are related to the labour program.
The federal workers' compensation, which is our GECA, the Government Employees Compensation Act, is the area where we work very closely with provincial workers' compensation boards to make sure those who are injured in the workplace are compensated for their injury. Under this federal workers' compensation we're also very much engaged in helping people return to work appropriately. It's about prevention, support, and return to work. About 6,100 third-party claims were filed and about $1.8 million was recovered last year from workers' compensation claims.
The labour program also provides fire protection consultative services, through which we have engineers and inspectors helping across the country, those under federal jurisdiction, including first nations on reserve.
Lastly, there is the wage earner protection program. This is our new program, introduced in 2008 as part of the Government of Canada's economic action plan, which takes into account the economic fragility of the last few years by giving compensation to those who are affected by a bankruptcy. We have a cap of $3,400. It's a one-time payment, but it helps people to make that transition and adjustment to their next stage.
Since 2008, when the WEPP was implemented, 40,000 Canadians have received almost $90 million in WEPP payments.
On page 12, last but not least, there is the Employment Equity Act from 1986. The Minister of Labour has responsibility for the act, but of course it is something that every federal department and agency and those under their jurisdiction have responsibility to conform to. The Employment Equity Act is about four designated groups chosen because they have high unemployment rates and more barriers to labour market participation. The groups are women, aboriginal persons, persons with disabilities, and visible minorities.
We have three programs related to the Employment Equity Act. The first one is the legislated employment equity program requiring those under our jurisdiction to file an employment equity report and to show us they are making every effort to bring in, through an inclusive strategy, those four designated groups.
We also have the federal contractors program, whereby those who get a contract with the federal government also have to demonstrate that they are taking seriously their employment equity commitments.
Lastly, the racism-free workplace strategy helps us work in partnerships with groups such as the Aboriginal Human Resource Council, the National Film Board, and the Metropolis Secretariat run out of Citizenship and Immigration Canada to promote the benefits of inclusion in the workplace.
It's not only about doing the right thing; it's also to try to help workplaces see that there are benefits to productivity. As you probably know, the Canadian workforce before long is going to have its growth in two groups: new immigrants and aboriginal persons. We try to promote the benefits of inclusion and not just the barriers that are being faced.
