Due Diligence: Successfully Meeting Health & Safety's Highest Standards

Seminar Summary

Due diligence is a key defence for companies and individuals charged under OH&S legislation. A successful defence requires demonstration of actions, procedures, policies, monitoring and other steps taken to meet OH&S obligations and prevent accidents. Due diligence requirements are often not fully understood, leaving an organization with a false sense of security. Alternatively, the standard to demonstrate due diligence may be seen as so high as to be impossible to meet. In this session, focusing primarily on Ontario, but including commentary and cases from other Canadian jurisdictions, we will:

• Discuss key aspects involved in taking all reasonable care to ensure safety in the workplace
• Provide practical tips and best practices through demonstrations and examples drawn from real cases
• Provide specific advice on creating useful documentation to capture and prove corporate and supervisory behaviour to demonstrate due diligence
• Discuss how courts and arbitrators deal with the problem of worker disobedience/disregard for safety rules or directives and the importance of discipline as a component of due diligence
• Provide advice on using due diligence as a sword (when an accident occurs) rather than a shield (after an OH&S prosecution is commenced)