Brief Your CEO
Why the Company Must At
Least Consider Complying
With Voluntary Safety
Standards
A metalworker in Alberta was killed after his clothes got entangled in a conveyor belt roller. The worker had
apparently crawled under the conveyor and got caught in the return belt idler. The company was charged
with several OHS violations. The AB OHS Act required employers to install “effective safeguards” on
machinery. But neither the Act nor regulations defined what “effective safeguards” meant. So to determine
what was “effective,” the court looked at a voluntary standard of the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME), that requires guarding against inadvertent contact but doesn’t require guarding of a
return belt idler. Here, the contact probably wasn’t inadvertent because the worker had crawled under the
conveyor, the court said. And the company’s decision to guard the roller only on the side facing the worker
when he was at his workstation conformed with the ASME standards. So the court dismissed all charges
against the company [R v. Maple Leaf Metal Industries Ltd.].
THE PROBLEM
The OHS laws and regulations set out the minimum steps a company must take to protect workers.
Companies are; of course, free to do more than the law requires safeguarding their workers.
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Brief Your CEO
One option is to comply with voluntary safety standards established by non-governmental organizations,
such as the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) and the ASME. Although voluntary, complying with these
standards can help a company prove that it exercised due diligence and thereby avoid liability for incidents
and injuries. That’s what happened in the Maple Leaf Metals case. Here’s how.
THE EXPLANATION
To establish due diligence, a company must show that it made “all reasonable efforts” to protect the health
and safety of its workers and prevent OHS violations. But how does a court decide what a company should
reasonably have done?
One way is by looking at whether the company complied with voluntary safety standards. Thus, the fact
that the machine guarding measures used by the company in the Maple Leaf Metals case complied with
ASME standards was a crucial factor in the court’s ruling that the company had exercised due diligence. It
can work the other way, too. In other words, failure to comply with a voluntary standard is evidence of a
lack of due diligence on the part of the company and/or its officers and directors.
Example: A worker in Ontario lost three fingers when his hand got caught in a machine. The OHS
regulations required the nip hazard to be guarded, but didn’t say what guarding device should be used.
However, a CSA standard on machine guarding did specify requirements for the guarding device. The court
cited the company’s failure to comply with the CSA voluntary standard in ruling that the company had not
exercised due diligence to avoid a machine guarding violation [R v. Grant Forest Products Inc.].
SOLUTION
We’re not suggesting that complying with voluntary standards is the only way to establish due diligence. In
fact, not all voluntary standards are appropriate for all companies. However, it is essential for all companies
to at least consider complying with voluntary standards. After all, voluntary standards represent a
judgment of what should be done to protect against particular hazards. So if we don’t comply with them,
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Brief Your CEO
we should at least be able to prove that we examined the standards and discussed whether they would be
appropriate for the company.
WHAT TO DO
In order to protect the company—as well as yourself and fellow officers and directors–against the risk of
liability, you must be aware of the importance of voluntary safety standards and:

Stay up to date on the voluntary safety standards applicable to the industry;

Consider compliance with all relevant voluntary safety standards; and

Document why the company chose not to comply with a voluntary safety standard.
For example, the CSA has adopted a brand new safety management system standard called CSA Z1000. The
standard represents an important consensual agreement about what Canadian companies should do to
manage their safety programs. As such, it is likely to carry a lot of weight with regulators, prosecutors and
judges. As CEO, it’s essential that you and your fellow officers understand what the standard says and at
least consider whether to adopt it. At a very minimum, you must:

Obtain a copy of CSA Z1000;

Read the standard and become familiar with what it says; and

Discuss with me, the safety coordinator, the merits of complying with the new standard.
SHOW YOUR LAWYER
R v. Grant Forest Products Inc., [2002] O.J. No. 3374, July 26, 2002
R v. Maple Leaf Metal Industries Ltd., [2000] A.B.P.C. 95, June 22, 2000
OHS Insider | Bongarde Media Co | 102-501 Main Street, Penticton, BC | V2A 9A6 | Canada | 800.667.9300