Mr. Speaker, on this national day of mourning, I offer my deepest sympathy to Canadian workers.
We all remember friends, relatives or colleagues who died, were injured or handicapped for life as a result of work accidents.
Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to be able to say that from year to year workplace safety and health have been improving and that prevention measures have been implemented with a high level of success. Unfortunately this is not so.
In 1992 for example, more than 700 workers lost their lives as a result of work accidents. Although the fatality rate generally has declined over the past decade all the parties involved, the workers, employers, unions and regulatory bodies, clearly have to improve and take more seriously the question of workplace safety so they begin to make a difference to all those who have lost friends, relatives and family members to workplace accidents.
Investing in safety and health is investing in people and in prosperity and also avoidance of unnecessary tragedies. I am very hopeful that step by step we can continue to enhance regulations at the federal and provincial levels to increase compliance and to improve our performance in protecting Canadian workers.
To that effect, the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety located in Hamilton provides a very important service of information, support and resources in protecting employees and giving important knowledge to employers about workplace safety.
I recently visited the centre, and took that opportunity to announce that my government was giving the centre $100,000 to help it maintain its toll free emergency phone service.
This very important service ensures that there is one central place where individuals, employees and employers can phone in to get up to date information. It would be my hope in the future to continue to enhance and augment the role of the centre. I believe it is one of the most important institutions in workplace safety in the country.
I would also like to point out to members that occupational health and safety is a broad international concern. When signing the NAFTA labour agreement the three countries, Mexico, United States and our own agreed that this would be the priority issue. We have established as a result of that meeting a series of major conferences on workplace safety, the first beginning in Canada this summer.
We can now use the labour agreement under NAFTA as a venue and a means by which we can both improve knowledge and even aid those other countries by sharing information, by sharing knowledge and looking at measures in key industries like the oil and gas industry, engineering and others so that we can begin to provide in a co-operative fashion mutual activities.
I am sure that all members join me in remembering those who have paid the ultimate price in the workplace. I trust that they will encourage their constituents to be more vigilant about occupational health and safety. We can drastically reduce the pain and suffering caused by accidents to the victims, their families and friends if we all are more caring, more vigilant and more concerned.