Showcase your safety culture, celebrate your people, and benchmark your organization against the best in the country
Nominations are now open for the 2026 Canada’s Safest Employers Awards, giving organizations across the country a chance to join a select group of safety champions recognized as the national standard-setters in occupational health and safety. This year’s gala will be held on October 22, 2026, at Toronto’s Automotive Building at Exhibition Place, with nominations accepted until May 8, 2026.
For 16 years, the Canada’s Safest Employers Awards have honoured the people, teams and companies redefining what safe work looks like in Canada. Winners are celebrated across Canadian Occupational Safety’s print and digital platforms and at a high-profile awards night that brings together hundreds of leaders from every corner of the safety profession.
The 2025 awards underscored just how far organizations are willing to go to protect their people. Ledcor Industries’ vice president of corporate health, safety and environment, Larry Jones, captured the BGIS Award for Safety Leader of the Year. Jones says the accolade is really about the people around him. “Recognition isn’t the goal. The real highlight is seeing people grow and building everything around a culture of caring. That’s what makes the difference.”
That culture of care is echoed at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada (TMMC), which last year took home the WSIB Award for Canada’s Best Health & Safety Culture, while president Frank Voss was named CEO of the Year. Voss says the company’s decade-long safety transformation has hinged on leaders getting close to the work and listening to employees on the shop floor. “We thought we were doing great and had lots of good things in place, but some team members said, ‘you might think you’re doing really good things, but this is what we see and what we think and there’s a gap,’” he explained, noting that confronting that gap was the catalyst for change.
TMMC’s approach now centres on what it calls “felt leadership,” with supervisors expected to walk in employees’ shoes and respond directly to their concerns. As Voss puts it, “The big thing that we learned… was you need to take the time to go and listen to your team members. Have the supervisor go and try and live in the team member’s shoes to be able to understand the pain, the frustration, the struggles.” It’s a message aimed squarely at senior leaders considering a nomination for CEO of the Year or Canada’s Best Health & Safety Culture in 2026.
Frontline-focused safety leadership was also on display at Valard Construction LP, which was named Canada’s Safest Utilities and Electrical Employer in 2025. For Valard’s health and safety leader Shilo Neveu, the award was never about one person or even one department. “This award belongs to the frontline workers, those who keep the lights and power on for everyone in Canada, day in and day out,” Neveu said. He and the team at Valard even sent the award on a cross-country tour to shine a spotlight on the frontline crews. Neveu added “this award validates our health, safety and wellness journey, a journey that I’m sure all of us will agree is never-ending.”
Organizations looking to follow in those footsteps will find no shortage of opportunities. The 2026 program features a full suite of individual honours – including Safety Leader of the Year, the WSPS Award for CEO of the Year, and the Minerva Award for Rising Star of the Year – alongside company and team awards spanning sectors such as construction, mining and natural resources, manufacturing, logistics and supply chain, utilities and electrical, public sector, non-profit, and more.
Submitting a nomination is free, and the process is designed to spotlight concrete achievements over the past year. Nominations are open until May 8, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. EST, after which shortlisted, organizations will be invited to provide more detailed submissions and employee perception surveys to help judges assess their safety culture and outcomes. Excellence awardees will be announced in July, with winners revealed live at the gala in October which will be part of a bigger two-day event called COS Live, combining the awards with the Women in Safety Summit and the Canadian Safety Summit.
