Employee health and wellness focus of Sask Mining Week

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Ensuring the health and safety of employees is a priority year-round, but for one week this spring the mining industry in Saskatchewan decided to focus extra attention on the subject.

Employee Health and Wellness was the theme of this year's Saskatchewan Mining Week celebrations, held May 31 to June 5.

One of the things the industry had to celebrate was the new mine safety regulations that came into effect last year. Those new regulations were arrived at in consultation with all players in the industry.

"New mines regulations that are the result of six years of collaborative work by mine owners, mine workers and the provincial government will make mining in Saskatchewan safer," Labour Minister Deb Higgins said when the new regulations were first announced. "These regulations reflect best practices in modern mines. They set new standards for mine rescue and underground refuge stations, make provisions for improved air quality and deal with technological issues such as the increasing use of remote-controlled equipment."

The new regulations were created to replace a previous set of mine safety regulations that had been in place since 1978, explained Dr. Ernie Becker, director of the radiation and safety unit with Saskatchewan Labour and chief mine inspector for the department's mine safety unit.

One of the reasons the new regulations were needed was to bring them in line with the language used in the province's Occupational Health and Safety Act that came into force in 1993, and with the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations that came into effect three years later, Becker said.

Another reason new regulations were needed was to bring them up-to-date with the technology being used in the mines.

"Obviously things change as the years go by, so there were a number of other changes looking at this thing. For instance, diesel exhaust has become much more prominent than it was back in '78. There were standards then already, but the new regulations call for written diesel maintenance programs underground and a testing plan, and also reduction in the sulphur content of the fuel," Becker said. "It was really a modernization."

The new regulations also allowed for a streamlining of safety requirements. As the industry went through changes, new rules were brought in to deal with those changes, but those rules weren't contained within the official occupational health and safety regulations for mines. For example, the old regulations didn't address the safety standards for the use of remote-controlled equipment.

"You know, that didn't exist in '78, and so this equipment had been coming in and we had been essentially telling the mining companies they had to follow the Ontario standards for use of remotely-controlled mobile equipment ... the mining companies were already really in compliance, but now we've put it into our regulations," Becker said.

"The mining industry in Saskatchewan has always been very heavily regulated. They get a lot more inspections than any other workplace in Saskatchewan. And so none of this is really a surprise to anyone," Becker said of the industry reaction to the new regulations. "But I think it just makes life simpler for everyone, the government inspectors and the mining companies, to have everything in writing."

Another reason there were no surprises, Becker said, was because the industry played a key role in the development of the regulations.

"It was discussed in great detail for years ... there was a great deal of discussion with the unions and with the companies. So really in the end when this was passed, there were no surprises for anyone," he said. "And really, I believe we achieved a very high level of consensus between the government and the labour unions and the companies."