Candace Carnahan's free safety program is in New Brunswick schools, and she wants it in every province
Candace Carnahan was 21 years old when a paper mill machine in New Brunswick changed her life forever. Working as a summer student in 1999, she lost her leg after her foot went into a piece of equipment that had both its safety guard and its emergency stop system removed. She very nearly did not survive.
More than two decades later, Carnahan, president of Candace Carnahan Motivational Speaking Incorporated, is channelling that experience into a national push to ensure no young worker enters the workforce without a foundation of safety awareness. Her vehicle is a program called Step Up Your Safety, and her goal is to see it made mandatory in every province.
A career born from a near-fatality
WorkSafe New Brunswick approached Carnahan within a year of her accident to speak at high schools. It was an invitation that launched a global speaking career. She has since addressed audiences in Australia, Singapore, Europe, and across North America, working with corporations and conferences on resilience and workplace culture.
But she has deliberately redirected her focus back to young workers. The crisis, she says, has not gone away.
"Young workers are still getting hurt and killed," she said. "A young worker was just killed three weeks ago in New Brunswick. So to me, if this is still happening, why aren't we doing more?"
The Step Up Your Safety program
Step Up Your Safety is now embedded in New Brunswick's Grade 9 Personal Health and Wellness curriculum. WorkSafe NB also made it freely available online at stepupyoursafety.com so any young worker in the province can access it independently.
The program consists of four videos, each five to seven minutes long, followed by comprehensive testing questions. Students must pass all questions to receive a certificate – a process that takes under 45 minutes in total. The content features actual high school students, filmed in schools, discussing the real pressures they face at work.
Carnahan is careful to distinguish between awareness and training. The program is not a substitute for WHMIS, fall protection or PPE instruction. It is, she says, the layer that has to come first.
"If you are just thrown into a workplace as a young worker and the first thing you hear about safety is from your employer, it's not really sinking in," she said. "You don't have that understanding already of what your basic awareness level really needs to be."
The program also takes on psychological health and safety, a dimension Carnahan sees as the foundation on which all physical safety rests. If young workers do not feel respected or included, she argues, procedural rights become meaningless.
"If you are showing up at work and you don't feel respected, included, part of the team, valued, understood… then telling a 17-year-old that they have the right to refuse unsafe work is basically useless."
A call to provinces and employers
Carnahan's ambition extends well beyond New Brunswick. She wants every grade nine student in Canada who is eligible to work to complete the program, regardless of whether they are heading into co-op, an apprenticeship, or a part-time job at a local business.
She frames the argument simply: parents do not leave boundary education to a child's first relationship. They should not leave workplace safety education for young workers to a first employer either.
"Why would you leave it up to your first employer to teach them about safety? You don't know who that is."
She is also calling on employers to use the program as part of onboarding – a step taken before any specific safety training begins. The program is already being offered through WorkSafe New Brunswick and has gained interest from Service Hospitality Saskatchewan, with Carnahan actively seeking additional provincial partners.
The case she makes is a straightforward one: it takes less than an hour, it is free, and it could save a life.
"It could give somebody enough information and confidence to speak up that it could change a life or save a life. And I believe that wholeheartedly."
