Canada's rate could be as much as 10 times higher, says expert
In 2022, Canada had a total of 993 workplace fatalities, according to data from the Allied Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada.
The actual number, however, could be 10 times more, said one expert.
“We only report the claims that are accepted for compensation,” said Dr. Steven Bittle, University of Ottawa criminologist.
Canada’s statistics are mainly gathered from workers’ compensation boards.
According to Compensation Boards data, construction, among all industries, had the most number of workplace fatalities in 2022 at 183, reported the Daily Commercial News. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting followed with 147 deaths, and manufacturing came in third with 137 deaths.
But workers’ compensation boards were not established to record worker death or injuries in Canada, Bittle said. Instead, they were established as an insurance system.
“The damage is much greater,” Bittle said. And Canada’s workplace fatality rate could be as much as 10 times higher, based on his research that looked at comparative death and injuries statistics in the other countries.
For example, while Canada tracks asbestos-related workplace deaths, it does not track the number of wives who, for years, washed her husband’s asbestos-contaminated clothing, Bittle said.
Another report from the University of Alberta detailed how workplace deaths or injuries don’t include workers killed in motor vehicle accidents travelling to work, private insurance and provinces where a vehicle accident onsite can be claimed against the provincial system, according to the Daily Commercial News article.
Previously, the Workers Health & Safety Centre noted that there is a vast discrepancy between the number of work-related deaths officially reported by Ontario’s Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) and other Worker’s Compensation Boards (WCBs) across Canada.
Andrew Mudge, executive director of the Workers Health & Safety Centre, also said that the number of worker deaths in Ontario in 2022 was “about 10 times higher than what the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) put through”.
That would put the number of estimated worker deaths in Ontario in 2022 closer to 2,500. The WSIB is reporting 242 deaths related to fatalities in the workplace and approved claims for occupational disease.
Bittle recommended that governments take over the task of keeping track of workplace deaths.
