Bill 36 adds a new Part IV.1 to Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act that obliges the Minister to develop and implement a Worker Heat Protection Standard. The Standard will mandate engineering and administrative controls, require employer heat-stress policies and assessments, set training requirements, and oblige employers to provide drinking fluids and personal cooling equipment where needed.
The Bill also guarantees employees paid time at their regular rate for rest breaks, medical removal and training tied to the Standard, requires training and language-access measures, and forces annual public reporting on heat illness and enforcement for the first five years. For employers, compliance will involve new assessments, plans, approved training, and potential capital or operational costs; for safety professionals, it creates defined obligations and reporting flows to design and enforce controls.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Bill requires the Minister to create and publish a Worker Heat Protection Standard that prescribes engineering controls, administrative controls (work practices and scheduling), mandatory employer policies and assessments, PPE/cooling equipment, access to fluids, and training approved by the Chief Prevention Officer. It also mandates paid time for rest, medical removal and training.
Who It Affects
All Ontario employers and workers across sectors where heat exposure is possible—outdoor work, agriculture, manufacturing, education, maintenance and trades—with specific obligations for health and safety representatives and joint health and safety committees. The Ministry must consult provincial clinics and the labour federation and will report annually for five years.
Why It Matters
The Bill creates a province-wide, enforceable framework for occupational heat risk rather than leaving responses to patchwork local practice; it shifts key compliance costs to employers and builds mandatory training and data collection into regulatory design, which will change workplace routines, procurement for cooling solutions, and enforcement priorities.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The core requirement is a Minister-developed Worker Heat Protection Standard that sets out how employers must prevent and limit dangerous heat exposures. The Standard will require engineering controls where practical—things like shielding workers from heat sources, exhaust ventilation or climate control—and will also rely on the hierarchy of controls to authorize administrative measures such as revised work schedules, rest-break regimes and changed work procedures.
The Standard must be published online and updated at least annually.
Employers must prepare a written Heat Stress and Protection Policy and Program in consultation with their health and safety representative or committee, carry out periodic heat stress assessments (and share the results with the representative/committee), provide cool drinking water or equivalent hydrating fluids near work areas, and supply specified personal cooling equipment at the employer’s expense when required. The Bill makes training compulsory: employees and supervisors must receive training on signs of heat illness and emergency response, while health and safety representatives and committee members must take an approved, prescribed training program delivered by approved providers.A distinctive operational feature is the bill’s protection of pay: employees are entitled to be paid at their normal rate for any period required under the Standard—this includes rest and break periods, medical removal protection time and time spent in training.
The Minister must implement the Standard within a defined timeframe after the section comes into force and must consult Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers and the Ontario Federation of Labour when developing it. For the first five years after implementation, the Ministry will report annually to the Legislature on heat-illness and mortality figures and enforcement activity, creating a statutory data stream to track outcomes.The Bill also contains practical accessibility rules: required materials (training, posters, hazard alerts, written plans) must be in plain English and French and also in another language understood by employees when required, and must be appropriate for employee literacy and educational levels.
Finally, the Bill preserves any stronger protections that already exist in other standards—employers can’t use this standard to reduce existing worker protections.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The Minister must develop and publish a Worker Heat Protection Standard that includes engineering controls, administrative controls, PPE/cooling equipment, heat assessments, and access to hydrating fluids.
Employers must create and annually review a written Heat Stress and Protection Policy and Program and conduct heat stress assessments at least at the prescribed frequency, sharing results with health and safety representatives or committees.
The Bill requires employers to pay employees their regular rate for any period the Standard mandates—rest/break time, medical removal protection, and time spent in required training.
Training for health and safety representatives and committee members must meet prescribed content and learning objectives and be approved under the Act’s sections governing approved courses and providers (sections 7.1 and 7.2).
For the first five years after implementation the Minister must present an annual report to the Legislature with heat-related illness and mortality figures plus the Ministry’s enforcement activity under the Standard.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Worker Heat Protection Standard — mandatory content
This subsection lists the core elements the Minister must include in the Standard: engineering controls (isolation, shielding, ventilation, climate control), administrative controls via the hierarchy of controls (work procedures, scheduling), employer-provided cooling PPE, employer policies/programs, heat stress assessments, sharing results with safety reps/committees, and access to drinking water. Practically, the clause anchors both prescriptive and performance tools: regulators can require concrete engineering fixes while also directing employers to alter work systems where engineering change isn’t feasible.
Implementation timing, consultation, updates and publication
The Standard must be implemented no later than 12 months after this section comes into force; the Ministry must consult Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers and the Ontario Federation of Labour and must update the Standard at least annually. The Standard must be published on a government website. For employers and safety professionals, this creates a recurring rulemaking cadence and a single public reference point for compliance obligations and expectations.
Training requirements and approved providers
Section 42.1 mandates employee and supervisor training on recognition of heat illness, emergency response and monitoring; Section 42.2 requires specialized training for health and safety representatives and committee members with prescribed content, best practices, and learning objectives. Critically, the Bill requires those representative-level courses to be approved under the Act’s course-and-provider approval mechanism (sections 7.1 and 7.2), which means Ontario will gate who can deliver compliance training and what counts as acceptable instruction.
Protection of pay for required periods
This short, operationally significant clause guarantees employees their regular rate of pay for any period the Standard requires—explicitly including rest and breaks, medical removal protection, and training time. That creates an ongoing wage cost tied to compliance and establishes a statutory entitlement that could be enforceable under employment standards or OHSA enforcement mechanisms, depending on interpretation and enforcement practice.
Language and plain‑language accessibility
All required materials—training, posters, labels, hazard alerts and written plans—must be in plain language in English and French and in another language understood by workers when necessary, with appropriate vocabulary and literacy level. This clause raises operational questions for multi‑lingual workplaces about translation quality, who determines adequacy and how inspectors will assess compliance.
No rollback of existing protections
The Standard cannot be used to reduce protections that workers already enjoy under other heat-protection standards. This preserves stronger local or sectoral rules and signals that the provincial Standard sets a floor, not a ceiling—important for unions, sector regulators and employers who operate across jurisdictions with differing rules.
Reporting obligations and commencement timing
Section 42.6 requires the Minister to report annually to the Legislature on heat-related illness and mortality and on enforcement activities for five years after the Standard is implemented. Separately, the Act’s commencement clause brings the law into force 12 months after Royal Assent; the Standard must then be implemented no later than 12 months after that commencement date, effectively allowing up to two years before full Standard implementation. The reporting requirement creates a statutory monitoring obligation that can inform future rule changes but depends on consistent data collection and enforcement recording.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Outdoor and agricultural workers: The Standard creates enforceable obligations that should reduce heat exposure through controls, scheduled rest and guaranteed paid breaks, directly lowering acute illness and mortality risk.
- Health and safety representatives and joint committees: Required access to assessment results, mandated approved training, and a defined role in policy development increase their capacity to spot and mitigate risks.
- Workers with limited English proficiency or lower literacy: The language-access requirement forces employers to provide materials in accessible formats and other languages, improving comprehension of hazards and rights.
- Occupational health clinics and public-health analysts: Mandatory reporting on illnesses, deaths and enforcement will provide standardized data to evaluate interventions and guide clinical and public-health responses.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers (especially small businesses and seasonal employers): They must fund engineering fixes, cooling PPE, paid rest and training time, and the administrative work to produce policies, assessments and translations.
- The Ministry of Labour/Ministry enforcement units: They must develop the Standard, manage consultations, approve training/providers, and enforce the rules—requiring staffing, guidance development and oversight resources.
- Approved training providers and course developers: They bear the upfront cost of designing curriculum that meets prescribed learning objectives and securing approvals under the Act before they can deliver representative-level courses.
- Manufacturers and suppliers of cooling equipment and hydration solutions: Demand may increase rapidly; these supply-side actors must scale production and meet procurement standards while employers manage capital and inventory costs.
- Multi-jurisdictional employers: Firms operating across provinces or sectors with differing heat rules face compliance complexity and potential duplication of training, assessments and translated materials.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is speed versus specificity: the Bill seeks to protect workers quickly and uniformly but punts detailed exposure limits and implementation mechanics to a Ministerial standard that may take months to finalize—so it balances urgent worker safety needs against regulator and employer capacity to design, approve and finance workable technical rules.
The Bill deliberately leaves key technical thresholds and enforcement mechanisms to the Minister’s forthcoming Standard rather than specifying exposure limits, WBGT (Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature) triggers, or precise rest-break formulas. That creates regulatory flexibility but also regulatory uncertainty: employers will not know final compliance costs until the Standard is written, and inspectors will rely on interpretation to assess compliance.
The requirement that representative-level training be approved under sections 7.1 and 7.2 centralizes quality control but raises questions about capacity and criteria for approval and the timeline for certifying providers.
The Act’s timing structure is another practical tension. The law only comes into force 12 months after Royal Assent, and the Standard must be implemented no later than 12 months after the section comes into force—permitting up to two years between Royal Assent and a fully implemented Standard.
That delay gives employers lead time but slows the delivery of protections for workers facing immediate heat risks. Finally, the Bill creates an unfunded obligation for many employers: paid rest and medical-removal pay are explicit statutory costs that may collide with sectoral realities (seasonal work, piece rates, small margins), raising likely disputes over interpretation and enforcement and potential calls for exemptions or transitional supports.
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