2019 workplace injuries and fatalities report

Sean Tucker and Anya Keefe from the University of Regina have released their annual roll up of Canadian workplace injuries and fatalities using 2019 data. Note that this data is for the pre-COVID period, although there is some preliminary 2020 COVID-claims data included in a separate section.

The nub of the story for Alberta in 2019 (again, pre-COVID) is:

• Alberta continues to have among the highest per capita injury-related occupational fatality rate, which jumped 9% in 2019 over the previous three-year average. 
• Alberta also has the highest absolute number of injury-related fatalities despite having only about 10% of Canada’s population. 
• Alberta has the third highest absolute number of disease-related fatalities. 
• Alberta’s lost-time claim rate also jumped 11% in 2019 when compared the previous three-year average (the biggest jump in Canada)

Oddly, Alberta just announced changes to its OHS legislation (effective December 1) to weaken its already ineffective injury- and fatality-prevention system. The Alberta data in graphical form is below.

Nationally, there were about 39 accepted COVID-related fatalities and 32,742 accepted COVID-related lost-time claims in 2020. Here is a provincial breakdown.


It is not possible to draw conclusions from this snapshot but tracking and explaining the differences (when you control for population and perhaps the timing of the waves) in accepted cases in BC, AB, ON and QC would be an interesting project.

-- Bob Barnetson