Canada's top OHS groups unite to speak with one voice on safety

A landmark alliance of Canada's leading occupational health and safety professional organizations has quietly taken shape. Its founders say it could reshape how the country's safety community engages with government, attracts new talent, and raises awareness of the profession's multidisciplinary nature.

The Canadian Occupational Health and Safety Professions Alliance, known as COHSPA, officially formed in March 2025 following an inaugural in-person meeting in Toronto. The alliance brings together six organizations: the Board of Canadian Registered Safety Professionals (BCRSP), Health and Safety Professionals Canada (HSPC), the Canadian Registration Board of Occupational Hygienists (CRBOH), the Occupational Hygiene Association of Ontario, the Association of Canadian Ergonomists (ACE), and the Canadian College for the Certification of Professional Ergonomists (CCCPE).

The initiative was originally championed by BCRSP as part of its strategic plan to strengthen collaboration across the OHS sector. More than a decade of informal attempts at cross-discipline co-operation preceded it, but COHSPA is being described as the first concrete result.

"An effort to be more collaborative between these related professions has been ongoing for over a decade," said Alex Mercer, Western Canadian director for CRBOH. "This alliance is really the first real concrete thing that has happened in that space."

Speaking with one voice

The alliance's governing structure is deliberately lean. Each member organization appoints two representatives, who need not be board members, to participate in alliance activities and report back to their respective boards. Members have committed to meeting almost monthly, with at least one annual in-person gathering.

For BCRSP Executive Director Nikki Wright, the common thread binding all member organizations is straightforward: "We all want people to go home at the end of the day healthy and safe," Wright said. The challenge, she says, has been translating that shared belief into unified action.

"So that really is the messaging and the alignment. But it's a new organization and a new collaboration, so we're also learning how to work with each other as we go along."

That process of learning to work together is already paying dividends. Lobbying government with a united voice is on the project list, and Wright says it could be a significant step forward for the industry. "There is a lot of alignment," she said. "The ability to talk with one voice when we do talk to government or when we advocate in general for health and safety across the broad spectrum — that's the goal."

Dave Turner, president of HSPC, echoed that sentiment, emphasizing the need for consistent messaging when contentious issues arise in the OHS field. "We need to talk with one voice so that we're all speaking together," Turner said. "If there's any problems out there, we need to look at what our shared problems are and come up with the solution between us."

Raising the profile of every profession

One of COHSPA's most immediate priorities is public awareness, particularly for disciplines like occupational hygiene, which have historically struggled to gain visibility compared to safety generalists.

"Hygienists have kind of always been on the back burner," said Mercer. "Everybody knows what a safety professional is, but very few people understand what a hygienist does, what they are, how it fits into the bigger picture of health and safety."

For Donya Dales, president of CCCPE, promoting the many career streams within the field is essential to protecting workers and employers alike. "One of the key things we're looking for across the board is strengthening awareness of that multidisciplinary nature of health and safety," she said. "You might have an issue within the workplace that is best for an occupational hygienist to address, or an ergonomist, or a safety specialist — and quite often there might be a range of solutions that need to be examined."

Dales also pointed to shared goals around professional certification and continuing education across OHS disciplines, areas where the member organizations see significant opportunity to co-operate on webinars, education points, and jointly developed resources.

Addressing the talent pipeline

All three professions represented in COHSPA are grappling with the same challenge: an aging workforce, retirements outpacing recruitment, and a general public that doesn't know these careers exist.

Suzanne Wilde, incoming president of CRBOH, said youth outreach is central to the alliance's long-term agenda. "Our profession in itself is depleting," Wilde said. "A lot of folks are retiring and we want to get more people interested in the profession. They have to know what the profession is — even at the high school level, or going into post-secondary."

Dales described a broader push for collective student and youth outreach as one of COHSPA's most promising initiatives. "Is there a way that from a collective perspective we can get into high schools or universities and colleges to promote awareness of the different professions, the different competencies, and what the educational and work practice requirements are?" she said.

Occupational health and safety career paths in Canada remain underrepresented in guidance counselling and post-secondary recruitment, a gap the alliance hopes to close with coordinated outreach.

A unified front on regulatory harmonization

Beyond awareness, alliance members see COHSPA as a potential force for regulatory change. Safety legislation in Canada remains highly jurisdictional, creating compliance complexity for employers operating across multiple provinces. Wilde said a united professional voice could meaningfully influence that conversation.

"If we collaborate on the profession side of things and then maybe, federally, we can work towards harmonization…and we're hoping that being a unified front will help that piece as well."

Mercer went further. "If we show a united front as the professionals, the regulators are more likely to follow suit," she said. "If they see division, then there's not going to be any movement. But if they see that all these pockets of professionals are forming a united front and saying the same thing, it's much more likely that the regulators will do the same thing."

COHSPA is also keeping a close eye on emerging issues, including the impact of artificial intelligence on workplace safety. Wilde said having open discussions from the start, rather than each group working in isolation, is the alliance's defining advantage as new challenges arise.

The COHSPA website is now live at cohspa-acpsst.ca, with information about member organizations and the alliance's four founding goals.