Province of Ontario Launches Occupational Exposure Registry

March 18, 2026

In 1974, unionized miners in Elliot Lake walked off the job to bring attention to unsafe working conditions in uranium mining in the community, a move that eventually led to the creation of Ontario’s landmark health and safety laws. Refer to: How a wildcat mine walkout in Elliot Lake led to better health and safety - Elliot Lake News. Part of this legacy is that all workers now receive WHMIS training that teaches that exposures at work can cause sickness, but illnesses can take years to develop.

Recreation operations use a variety of common toxic and noxious chemicals in their operations with the marketplace continually offering new or alternative options. Over the years, tasks such as applying pesticides, evolved from having limited to strict control over safe use and exposure. This shift helped protect the next generation of workers but offered little for those who had been working in exposed conditions. Aquatic environments are considered one of the most complicated exposure environments to manage as conditions will quickly change based on bather load, ventilation use (or lack of) and water balance chemical applications. To prevent occupational illness, it is important for workers to know when and where harmful exposures may happen, and how to mitigate them. When such events occur, it is a common for a worker to “shake off the incident” and get on with their day without considering the long-term health effects of the exposure. The Occupational Health & Safety Act (OHSA) requires workers to complete and submit incident reports to supervisory staff when such situations happen however, recent changes have seen the launch of an Occupational Exposure Registry which has some health and safety professionals questioning the process as workers can now upload these experiences directly to the Ministry. Refer to: Occupational Exposure Registry

Those responsible for ensuring compliance to the OHSA have shared that they have had issues with staff by-passing the Internal Responsibility System (IRS) to submit claims information directly to the Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB) without mentioning anything to management, leaving the operation to find out at a later date. Concerns include that the initiative ignores the worker duty under Sec 28. (1) (c) of the OHSA and serves to undermine the IRS with the use of the term "voluntary" reporting, which may be interpreted as not a requirement to be reported to the employer. There is no indication as to how the province intends to use the information. Will it be aggregate data to study or historical records for future WSIB claims or potential enforcement tool? Currently, there is no perceived benefit of this from the employer's perspective. It is hoped that the intent of this data is to support preventative initiatives, as well as educate and empower workers to ensure adequate controls are in place but this has yet to be established.

What should recreation operations consider? Ensuring that the internal inventory of hazardous chemicals is current and that all workers are aware and properly trained in use, disposal and emergency response of hazardous chemicals is recommended. The ORFA will continue to monitor the rollout of this program and invites member feedback on their experiences.

Related Resources

• Reporting Workplace Health and Safety Incidents in a Recreation Environment 
• WHMIS Compliance Guideline

The Ontario Recreation Facilities Association provides leadership in professional development, and in products and services for its members who operate and manage recreation facilities in municipalities, educational institutions, government agencies, First Nations communities and in the private recreation sector.