Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister responsible for Human Resources and are in follow up on some questions my colleague Mr. Bromley was asking earlier.
Mr. Speaker, I’m having some difficulty reconciling the responses I heard with what I see in the response in the way of what we’ve paid in penalties. Mr. Speaker, in 2008, the first year of the Safe Advantage program, the GNWT paid $387,000 in claims. In 2008-2009 it was $440,000 in claims and we had a penalty of $11,000. In 2009-10 we paid $429,000 in claims but we didn’t have a penalty. This year, or rather 2010-11, we paid $778,000 in claims with a penalty of $243,000. Now we hear from the Minister today that because of these things and because of the Safe Advantage program, we are, in fact, developing health and safety committees to help address some of these issues. I’m wondering if the Minister could provide some clarity as to how, as we’re developing this thing, our incident rates are going up instead of down. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister responsible for Human Resources, Mr. Bob McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Our incident rates have been increasing for sure, but a large part of those costs are due to the fact that we’ve been paying compensation instead of focusing on medical rehabilitation and pension for injured workers. As a government, we’ve been working with other departments to develop occupational health and safety programs that will be government-wide, that all government departments will be represented on. We’ve been working very closely with the WSCC to have a blueprint or something so that we can continue to improve on our record. Through worksite assessments and so on, we’ve been able to prevent further penalties from being incurred. On a go-forward basis we expect to see our claims and incidents reduced, and we’re starting to see an improvement already. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’d like to thank the Minister for that. That certainly provides some clarity. I wasn’t sure, or I didn’t understand that it was the compensation that we’re paying instead of the rehabilitation that might be driving up these costs. I’m hoping the Minister can provide some assurances that we are changing our direction on how we’re going to be dealing with these and we’re going to focus more on promotion, or, sorry, prevention and rehabilitation rather than compensation. It seems to me that we really want to get our employees back to work, or better yet, we would like our employees not to go off work. So if I can get some assurances from the Minister that we are moving in that direction, that would be great. Thank you.
I guess that’s the approach that we want to take. We’re having these occupational health and safety standards and committees, and in conjunction with that we’ve also started focusing on our duty to accommodate. We’ve hired a duty to accommodate officer. We’ll be working very closely with WSCC so that we can work with individuals and help them get accommodated earlier rather than having to pay compensation, because, like, 62.4 percent of our costs are due to compensation. Thank you.
Once again, thanks to the Minister for that response. I’m happy to hear that we’re working in that direction.
The other part of that question was more focused on promotion. Earlier in the Minister’s responses to my colleague Mr. Bromley, he indicated that 43 percent of all of our claims are a result of falls, overexertion, climbing, and twisting. Mr. Speaker, all of these are completely avoidable. All of these, through proper training, education, and proper quality assurance and health and wellness training for our staff, every one of these can be avoided. If they’re avoided, we don’t have claims costs, which means we also don’t have people off for extended periods of time, we have employees that are healthier. So what is being done to enhance our promotion and training?
Yes, I understand from a previous response that these health and safety committee structures are going to be established, but I also know that we only have one health and safety officer in the Government of the Northwest Territories, or at least only one that I was able to find on the GNWT website, and that’s at Stanton. Where’s the rest of them, Mr. Speaker?
In addition to all of the criteria with regard to Safe Advantage program that we’re introducing, and I’ll just go through very quickly and I referenced several times the Government of the Northwest Territories Occupational Health and Safety Program and some of the things that we will be including are occupational health and safety management, occupational health and safety training, incident management, inspections, emergency preparedness, hazard management in Occupational Health and Safety Program evaluation. So we’ll have the structure and we’ll be working very closely with Workers’ Safety and Compensation Committee so that we can promote workplace training, increasing awareness regarding workplace safety, and also working with the department so that we can identify and get rid of unsafe worksites. So all of these things we’ll be working together to improve our record, because I agree that a large part of these incidents can be avoided, and that, as such, will reduce our costs. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Your final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It sounds like the Minister and I are on the same page. We ultimately want to avoid having any of these incidents occur, and when they do unfortunately occur, we want to be able to help the people transition back into the workforce as quickly as possible.
In developing this plan, and I’m very, very pleased that this plan has been developed and that it will be introduced hopefully soon so that others can see it. I think in order to be effective and develop it appropriately, we need to have a sense within the Government of the Northwest Territories of where the majority of these incidents occur. I don’t know if the department actually has a breakdown by department or by worksite or work type where these incidences are occurring. If we do, I would ask the Minister provide it to Members so we have a bit of a sense as to where these things are going so that we can focus in as an Assembly on solving these problems, and if the Minister doesn’t have that in HR, it must exist in the WSCC because they’re able to break down to the penny what our penalties are, which means or suggests to me that they have a pretty thorough listing of where all these things are occurring. So can the Minister commit to providing the Members with a bit of a breakdown as to where these incidents or the majority of these incidents are occurring, so that we can have a better understanding and work to solve this problem in the future? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I can provide the following information: The top three natures of injury were: sprains, strains, and tears, 15 percent; bruises and contusions, 13 percent; cuts and lacerations, 9 percent; and the top three locations of injury were Yellowknife, 51 percent; Fort Smith, 16 percent; Inuvik, 10 percent. The majority of the incidents are in facilities that operate 24/7, 365 days a year, Mr. Speaker. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. McLeod. The honourable Member for Tu Nedhe, Mr. Beaulieu.
