The Ministry of Labour is changing the training standards that impact Joint Health and Safety Committee certification.   The intent of these changes is to “strengthen the common, consistent, foundational training requirements to ensure high quality and consistent delivery of approved JHSC certification training programs”.

The essentials of the changes are:

• Members of a Joint Health and Safety Committee who have been certified under the current requirements remain certified and are considered “certified for life”
• New members certified to sit on a Joint Health and Safety Committee will be required to recertify every three years.

The new standards come into effect on March 1, 2016.  In order to become certified under the current requirements, a member must complete both Part One and Part Two of the current standard training by February 29, 2016.

For more information on the changes to the JHSC Training Program and the changes coming in 2016, a good resource is: http://www.wsps.ca/Information-Resources/Topics/Certification-Training.

Does your organization have a Joint Health and Safety Committee?  Do you know who is on that committee?  How do you know if you need to have one?

The Ministry of Labour has guidelines to help businesses with regard to the size and requirements for Joint Health and Safety Committees.  A summary of how many members are required to form your Joint Health and Safety Committee is in the table below:

The number of members depends on the size of the business and how many of your employees are regular employees.  More information regarding the specifics can be found at:  http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/hs/pubs/jhsc/jhsc_jhsc.php