CCOHS hosts virtual event to mark the beginning of National Safety and Health week in Canada
A deeply personal story of loss, calls for courage in the face of production pressure, and creative messages from young filmmakers set the tone as the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) and national partners kicked off Safety and Health Week 2026 with a virtual event on May 4.
Hosted by CCOHS president and CEO Anne Tennier, the national launch highlighted the human cost of workplace failures and urged employers to embed safety as a core value rather than a checklist.
Safety ‘more than a set of rules’
Opening the event, Tennier situated the week as an opportunity to renew commitments to safer, healthier environments “at work, at home, and in our communities,” emphasizing that health and safety must extend well beyond regulatory minimums.
“Health and safety is more than a set of rules or procedure. It’s a culture, one where everyone is respected, supported, and protected,” she told participants from across the country.
Tennier framed safety as an “ongoing journey” requiring vigilance, proactive hazard identification and environments that support both physical and psychological well-being.
Dave Turner, president of Health and Safety Professionals Canada (HSPC), reinforced that message, warning that too many injuries and deaths still occur in Canadian workplaces. He cautioned employers against viewing safety solely through a regulatory lens, saying “safety is much more than compliance with rules and regulations. It’s about people — their working conditions, their attitudes, their physical and mental states.”
Turner urged health and safety professionals and employers to normalize interventions and peer-to-peer conversations, even when they feel uncomfortable, noting that “out of 100 interventions, you may get one or two rejections… at least that means we made 98 tasks safer in the workplace.”
‘Speed is not a safety plan’
For Threads of Life, a national charity supporting families affected by workplace tragedy, Safety and Health Week is both “a time of real grief and also something just as powerful, enduring love,” said executive director Eugene Gutierrez.
“Every worker deserves to come home. Every single day, no exceptions,” he said, calling that expectation “a moral commitment” that must underlie all work in a period of rapid infrastructure and green energy development.
“Speed is not a safety plan. A deadline is not a reason and a budget is not a justification,” Gutierrez warned. “When safety falls by the wayside it’s never an abstraction that pays the price. It is a person. It’s a name.”
He also linked physical safety with psychological health, arguing that true safety culture in 2026 “isn’t compliance, it’s courage” — including the courage for workers to speak up and for leaders to slow work when risks rise.
“We cannot call a workplace safe until every person in it feels safe enough to tell the truth,” Gutierrez said.
A brother’s story behind a fatal confined space explosion
The most emotional moment of the launch came from Threads of Life family speaker Alex Tuff, an occupational health and safety advisor with WorkplaceNL, who shared the story of his older brother Chris, killed at age 24 in a confined space explosion while working in Labrador.
Chris, who had no confined space training, was directed to enter a fuel tank that had been “steam cleaned” but not tested; there was no confined space permit, no ventilation, no rescue plan and the ladder was removed after he climbed in. Moments after he began cutting internal baffles with a plasma cutter, trapped vapours ignited, causing a fatal blast.
“It costs more to fill up the gas truck with diesel than it was the fine to kill someone in it,” Tuff said, noting that employers in the case were fined a total of $100,000.
He described how normalized shortcuts, ignored hazards and production pressures built what he calls a “catastrophe cake,” where “every unreported close call becomes an ingredient” until disaster becomes inevitable.
“Today, I’m here not as a health and safety professional or a speaker… I’m here as a brother,” Tuff said. “I share this story not to assign blame, but to give meaning to his loss, and to ensure his life and his death serve a greater purpose than tragedy.”
Youth bring fresh voices to safety
The launch also spotlighted the Focus on Safety National Youth Video Contest, with Tennier announcing the top three videos selected from 10 provincial and territorial submissions.
British Columbia students Journey Benson and Cole Wynne captured first place with “The Book of WorkSafe Wisdom,” a narrative about a young worker injured after inadequate training and ignored concerns.
“Safety and Health Week is only one week, but our commitment to creating workplaces that are physically and psychologically safe must remain strong every single day all year long,” Tennier said in closing, urging participants to take part in activities throughout the week and to carry the message forward beyond the calendar.
