This bill amends Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act in two connected ways: it expands the Act’s anti-reprisal protections to cover workers who speak out about workplace violence and harassment (including public disclosures), and it requires hospitals and long‑term care homes to publish on their websites the number of workplace violence and workplace harassment incidents on a monthly basis.
The changes raise immediate compliance and enforcement questions for health‑sector employers and their legal teams: hospitals and long‑term care homes must set up a recurring public reporting process that could create reputational risk, while all employers must reckon with a broader, enumerated list of protected activities and a wide statutory definition of “reprisal.”
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill inserts monthly public‑reporting duties into sections of the OHSA dealing with workplace violence and workplace harassment, requiring hospitals and long‑term care homes to post the number of incidents that occurred in the immediately preceding month. It also replaces and expands section 50(1) to list protected activities related to reporting, investigating and publicly disclosing workplace violence and harassment, and adds a new subsection defining reprisal and giving examples.
Who It Affects
Directly affects employers that are hospitals and licensed long‑term care homes in Ontario (they must post monthly counts). Indirectly affects all employers, workers, joint health and safety committees, unions, workplace investigators and compliance officers because of the broadened reprisal protections and the enlarged list of protected activities.
Why It Matters
The bill turns workplace violence and harassment reporting into a public transparency requirement for major health providers and creates whistleblower‑style protection for speech about those issues. That combination raises compliance, privacy and reputational considerations for health‑care employers and is likely to change internal reporting and investigation practices.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill amends two strands of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. First, it changes the sections that govern workplace violence and workplace harassment reporting by adding a clear, recurring public‑reporting obligation for two defined categories of employers: hospitals and long‑term care homes.
Those employers must, at least once a month, post on their websites the count of incidents that occurred during the immediately preceding month. The requirement is strictly numerical and retrospective: the bill mandates a number posted for the prior month but does not add narrative, categorization or investigatory detail.
Second, the bill revamps the Act’s anti‑reprisal protection. It substitutes a new list of protected activities into section 50(1) and makes explicit that speaking out about workplace violence or harassment — including making disclosures to the public — is a protected activity when done in good faith.
The substituted subsection enumerates a broad array of activities (from seeking enforcement or advice to participating in investigations and public disclosures), signalling legislative intent to protect both internal and external reporting and participation in investigatory processes.The bill also inserts a new subsection that defines “reprisal” as any measure that adversely affects a worker’s employment and then lists concrete examples (ending employment, demotion or suspension, penalties such as layoff or transfer, and intimidation or coercion). That definition is framed as non‑exhaustive, which expands the scope of what a complainant can allege in a reprisal claim under the Act.
The amendments take effect on Royal Assent.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires hospitals and long‑term care homes to publicly post, at least once a month on their websites, the number of workplace violence incidents that occurred in the immediately preceding month.
A parallel requirement mandates monthly website publication of the number of workplace harassment incidents for the same two categories of employers.
Section 50(1) is replaced with an expanded list of protected activities that includes making reports of workplace violence or harassment, participating in related investigations, and providing information or disclosures to the public.
The bill adds a subsection defining ‘reprisal’ as any measure that adversely affects a worker’s employment and gives examples including termination, demotion, layoffs, changes in location or hours, and intimidation.
The amendments come into force on the day the Act receives Royal Assent and are collected under the short title 'Speaking Out About, and Reporting On, Workplace Violence and Harassment Act, 2022.'.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Monthly public reporting of workplace violence by hospitals
This addition requires each employer that is a hospital to post, at least monthly, the numeric count of workplace violence incidents that occurred during the immediately preceding month. Practically, hospitals must establish a process to tally incidents, determine what qualifies as an incident under existing OHSA definitions, and publish that number on their public website on a recurring schedule.
Monthly public reporting of workplace harassment by long‑term care homes
Mirroring the violence provision, this subsection obligates employers that are long‑term care homes to publish a monthly count of workplace harassment incidents for the prior month. The mechanism is the same—website publication of a numeric figure—so long‑term care operators will need operational controls (recordkeeping, review, and web publication) to meet the cadence and to ensure consistent definitions are applied month to month.
Expanded list of protected activities (internal, external and public reports)
The bill replaces the existing anti‑reprisal provision with an enumerated, non‑exhaustive list of activities protected when carried out in good faith: compliance with the Act, seeking advice or enforcement, assisting joint health and safety committees, refusing unsafe work, giving information to safety representatives, reporting workplace violence or harassment, participating in investigations, and making public disclosures about workplace safety. By naming public disclosure explicitly, the provision makes clear that outside speech about workplace violence or harassment can attract the same protection as internal reporting.
Statutory definition of ‘reprisal’ with illustrative examples
The new subsection defines a reprisal as any measure that adversely affects a worker’s employment and immediately provides examples—termination, demotion, discipline, suspension, layoffs, transfers, wage reductions, changes to hours, and intimidation or coercion. Framing the list as illustrative rather than exhaustive signals that other adverse employment measures can also be challenged as reprisals, which could broaden the caseload and evidentiary questions for adjudicators.
Commencement on Royal Assent and short title
The Act comes into force on Royal Assent and is given a descriptive short title. There are no phased implementation dates or regulatory delegations in the text; employers required to report will be on the hook as soon as the law is in force unless implementing guidance or regulations are later issued under existing powers of the Act.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Workers who report violence or harassment — The explicit protections for reporting, participating in investigations and public disclosures reduce the legal risk of retaliation and make reprisal claims more straightforward to frame under the Act.
- Joint health and safety committees and unions — The expanded list bolsters committee members and union representatives who assist or receive information, clarifying that their activities are statutorily protected.
- Patients, residents and families in hospitals and long‑term care homes — Public monthly counts create transparency that could prompt attention to systemic safety issues and inform decisions by families and advocates.
- Health and safety advocates and inspectors — More accessible data and stronger whistleblower protections may increase reporting and cooperation with inspections and enforcement.
Who Bears the Cost
- Hospitals and long‑term care home employers — They must implement monthly counting and web‑publication processes, which creates administrative burden and potential reputational risk when counts are high or rise.
- Human resources and compliance teams — These teams will absorb the operational work of consistent incident coding, records management, disclosure reviews (including privacy screening) and public posting.
- Employers facing increased reprisal claims — Broader protected‑activity language and a non‑exhaustive reprisal definition may drive more complaints and litigation or tribunal proceedings, increasing legal and investigatory costs.
- Regulators and adjudicators — If reporting and whistleblower protections increase complaints, the Ministry and tribunals may face higher caseloads without additional resources.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension pits worker protection and public transparency against operational practicality and reputational risk: the law aims to encourage reporting and shine a light on workplace violence and harassment, but by requiring simple monthly counts and extending whistleblower protections to public disclosures it may create incentives to over‑report, under‑report, or litigate, while leaving employers to manage privacy, context and reputational fallout without detailed statutory guidance.
The bill creates clear duties and protections but leaves several practical and legal questions open. It mandates numeric, monthly website reporting without defining whether counts must be disaggregated (for example by source, severity, or outcome), so public numbers may lack context needed to assess seriousness or trends.
The Act does not address privacy screening or whether counts may reveal personal health information under PHIPA; administrators will need interpretive guidance to reconcile public transparency with privacy obligations.
The strengthened anti‑reprisal language is broad and protective, but that breadth creates implementation and evidentiary challenges. ‘Good faith’ remains the threshold for protected activity; adjudicating good faith, proving causation in reprisal claims, and distinguishing legitimate managerial action from unlawful reprisal will likely generate contested cases. The non‑exhaustive list of reprisals and the inclusion of public disclosures could prompt higher volumes of complaints and strategic uses of reprisal claims as leverage in labour or regulatory disputes.
Finally, because the bill applies public reporting only to hospitals and long‑term care homes, it raises questions about consistency across health‑care providers and whether this sectoral approach will shift reporting burdens or push incident categorization to avoid public visibility.
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