Only two months after coming to power in June, Ontario's Conservative Progressive party acted on a campaign promise to businesses by beginning to dismantle the province's Workplace Health and Safety Agency. Ontario Minister of Labor, Elizabeth Witmer, halted program development at the agency, fired its bipartite business-labor board of directors, and appointed a 100-day review panel chaired by a ministry bureaucrat to recommend a more effective way to address the health and safety needs of Ontario's workplaces. In a letter to the Ontario Federation of Labor, Premier Michael Harris attributed the action to "serious problems with the agency's governance structure." Harris said the agency "failed to respond to the need for a more effective workplace health and safety training program."
Business and labor groups in Ontario have been embattled since August over the agency's fate, to be decided late this month by the review panel. Both sides predict the agency will be shuffled into Ontario's Workers' Compensation Board.