Funding cuts to the office tasked with preventing workplace deaths and plans to “modernize” health and safety provisions in the province will make workers less safe on the job, opposition critics argued at Queen’s Park Tuesday.“No one person should go to work in the province of Ontario and not know if they’re coming home at the end of the day to their families,” said NDP labour critic Wayne Gates during question period.“What exactly is the value of a life of a worker to this government?”It comes as the Ministry of Labour’s prevention office, which is tasked with preventing workplace injury, illness and death in the province faces $16 million in cuts this year, despite the fact the body is not taxpayer funded and does not impact the government’s bottom line.The office’s costs are covered by reimbursements from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.An extra $512,000 will be dedicated to health and safety enforcement this year, Labour Minister Laurie Scott said Tuesday.Read more:Tories slash $17M from services for victims of violenceStem cell research institute latest victim of Ford government cost cuttingWhat happens when a school loses education workers? It’s worse than you might think“We had important decisions to make putting people as a priority. We have looked at health and safety programs. We have worked with the partners that deliver these health and safety programs. There are other avenues of revenue for them to provide the programs, but we have, as I said, again, increased our enforcement budget by half a million dollars,” she said.The bulk of the cuts will impact research projects on issues like occupational disease, as well as the province’s independent health and safety associations, which provide ministry-approved training and support to workplaces across Ontario.Earlier this year, the Ministry of Labour announced plans to reform training for workplace joint h ...
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