As I maintained in my presentation, health and safety officers are neutral and they are trained. They are the experts on resolving issues in the workplace. To call a health and safety officer into the workplace, the parties have really reached the end of a resolution process in the workplace. The communication has broken. How do you fix that? Do you bring in a neutral party? But if the minister is getting those issues, how is the minister, then, the neutral and trained party for that? And who will the minister then call in? Why would we not leave the language already in the legislation, having the trained and neutral officers come in to help the workplace party resolve the issue? If we're so concerned about health and safety violations happening in the workplace, you need to have a well-trained workforce. Perhaps the answer is to have more training in the workplace so that the workplace parties have the tools necessary to look at preventative methods of looking at and identifying the hazards in the workplace. That's what health and safety's mandate is in the workplace. It's identifying the hazards and either eliminating or mitigating the exposure to those hazards. That's through training and knowledge.
On November 19th, 2013. See this statement in context.