Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I recently wrote a request to all departments regarding a WSCC matter. In short, it was an information request based on monthly incidents and accident reports. I’m grateful that Human Resources was to coordinate the paperwork for the various departments, because without their assistance – that is the people in Human Resources – the various departments may have actually sent me the unedited information.
Now, the reason I say unedited is based on the concerns that some of the summary documents – the 195 pages I’ve poured over that were supplied to both me and Mr. Dolynny – had some technical errors in it. Now, were these errors devastating? I don’t think so, but it also begs the question: What other information was summarized incorrectly? What information was missed or even overlooked? Even worse, what was ignored?
The Minister said to me in the context of a minor and, I stress, reasonable delay that he sent the information back because he wanted to make sure that all the detailed information was in there. I respect that and I appreciate the once over he provided, but the point is, is not knowing what he sent it back for to find out what the final version was from the version they supplied. Who knows what the gaps were that were missing? So we must be really grateful for his intervention.
However, the issue at hand, what’s interesting is there looks to be a number of penalties, and certainly the trends that it’s pointing to are a concern that we should all be starting to look at and ask ourselves what is this revealing. All the costs by themselves seem very low and perhaps not crippling to the wheels of government. I would say that this, regrettably, points towards a trend by various departments, where you see a trend of non-compliance of accident reports where they’re not filing on a timely basis.
Now, one or two late filing reports may be considered reasonable, because we don’t always know the circumstances and we can’t predict the circumstances of why these incidents have happened, but moreover, the greater concern is that there are dozens upon dozens upon dozens of late fees being charged because people aren’t filing their reports in a timely way.
What’s clear here is the amount of penalties this government is being fined for, an administrative process we could certainly easily hire someone to do. Also what’s being revealed is not only the first, the second or third offense, it should be an alarming trend that the Department of Human Resources should be on.
We must be relentless in our commitment for a safe working environment and we must not shirk our duties, responsibilities that we have prescribed in legislation and regulation in laws in this House. We should be complying.
I will have questions for the Minister of Human Resources later today on that fact. Thank you.
