Every year on April 28, we commemorate those injured or killed as a result of a workplace accident or occupational illness. It is a day of mourning, but also a scathing reminder of our collective failure to prevent these tragedies.
In 2023, another 210 people lost their lives in work-related circumstances, while the CNESST recorded more than 114,000 cases of occupational injuries. These alarming figures reveal a striking observation: our vision of prevention is deficient and the means put in place are failing.
Why doesn’t the trend change year after year? Perhaps because despite everything that is said to ease one’s conscience, there does not exist socially and in our workplaces a real culture of prevention of occupational injuries. We have allowed a conception to take hold according to which what has been put in place is in fact nothing more than a simple insurance scheme. Indeed, the CNESST has let itself be carried away by insurance logic and no longer follows the fundamental objective which led to its creation, namely: preventing professional injuries at the Source. An insurance company is used to compensate: to sign a check when an accident occurs. Prevention then aims to reduce the insurance premium. Managing the cost of the premium becomes more important than actually reducing the risk of injury at Source.
Receiving a check to remove wrinkles from a car or so that you can continue to benefit from lost property is okay. On the other hand, when it comes to human life, a check can never replace a permanent disability or, worse still, compensate for a death. Compensation should not be the easy way out and a way to clear one’s conscience, as is currently the case. It should be a means of last resort when all the efforts put into prevention have unfortunately not been enough.
In 2022, prevention represented 8.7% of the CNESST’s overall expenses, compared to 78.6% for repairs: an imbalance which indicates inadequate prioritization. Prevention must become the heart of the CNESST’s action. Last May, the Commission announced a reduction in the average contribution rate to the Workplace health and Safety Fund due to its good financial situation. It would have been more useful to rebalance things by funding prevention more.
Although it is still early to measure the real impact of Bill 27 – the Act modernizing the occupational health and safety regime (LMRSST) – we have serious doubts that the trend will continue. improving, as long as we do not fundamentally change our conception and our approach to prevention. The CNESST should finance more prevention, whether through more training for workers, more intervention so that employers respect their obligations, or more people on the ground. The CNESST must also better support the efforts of communities to implement new prevention mechanisms and ensure the full participation of workers in prevention efforts.
It is inconceivable that so many workers lose their lives or have their quality of life handicapped because of work. How can we accept in 2024, in a Quebec which is making contortions of all kinds in order to find workers, that tens of thousands of workers are missing due to occupational injuries? What if we made prevention a real priority in our actions and started to change on April 28, 2025 now?
Luc Vachon, president of the CSD
