Alberta is entering a new era of Occupational Health and Safety
("OHS") enforcement with legislation now
in force which empowers OHS Officers to impose "administrative
penalties" and issue "tickets" for OHS violations.
While the legislation has been in force since October 2013 and
January 2014, respectively, those powers have not been exercised by
OHS Officers as of the date of this article. They soon will be once
the necessary framework is in place, which includes, amongst other
things, training for OHS Officers to officially become "peace
officers".
Predicting the impact of these new enforcement tools is
uncertain as many questions regarding the details of how the
legislation will be enforced remain unanswered. The list of
questions is long. For example, will an employer be notified of a
worker's OHS ticket? Does notification violate the worker's
privacy rights? How should the employer respond if notice is given
about the violation? Does the employer discipline the
