HSE Committee Meetings – Centralized

[vickyp]

#102812

My company has Health and Safety Committees by branch (BC, Calgary, Edmonton, ON, and U.S. (includes Colorado & Texas), and a Head Office centralized one representing all these branches).  I’m a Co-Chair on a number of these Committees, so I’m attending multiple meetings and preparing multiple agendas and minutes.  Would we be compliant with legislation in all our jurisdictions if we just had 1 HSE Committee meeting monthly with all members from all Committees invited.  I’m thinking we could have the last 10 minutes or longer of the meeting where they can have their own branch discussion about items relevant to their local office’  That way we’re having a larger discussion, but time is also allocated for them to discuss local matters. Would this be compliant legislatively?

[vickyp]

#103270

I don’t believe so but I’ve actually never seen anything addressing this issue, i.e., whether one meeting would work for JHSCs in different jurisdictions. Here’s what I can tell you:

1. Each province has its own rules on how often a JHSC must meet, what constitutes a quorum, etc. Any joint meeting would thus have satisfy these rules for AB, BC AND Ontario. Not sure if that’s possible.
2. Each province also has its own rules on whether one JHSC can represent multiple sites. But I haven’t seen anything saying that multiple committees of the same company can get together and hold a joint meeting.
3. Even if you could get all the co chairs of a particular province together for a meeting, I don’t think you could have a single meeting with all the co chairs of committees from the other provinces. Thus, AB co-chairs MAY BE able to meet with other AB co-chairs, but probably not with co-chairs of BC and ON at same time.
4. Having said all this, let me add that the JHSC rules are pretty fluid right now due to the COVID situation and that several jurisdictions are making temporary exceptions and accommodations to avoid the need for physical JHSC meetings. So what I’d do is contact a representative from one of the OHS agencies–WorkSafeBC is usually pretty good–and explain your situation. They’ll probably be able to offer something useful and might even help you coordinate with the regulators in AB and ON

Hope that helps and thanks for the excellent question.

[vickyp]

#103271

Interesting. Does the WorkSafeBC guidance, if that’s what it is, pertain to ALL your committees or just the ones in BC’ I’m not sure if they have authority to speak for those other jurisdictions. This is something I would definitely clarify with them. Pls let me know what happens next. This is a novel situation and I want to see how it ends. Thanks.

[vickyp]

#103272

Interesting. Does the WorkSafeBC guidance, if that’s what it is, pertain to ALL your committees or just the ones in BC’ I’m not sure if they have authority to speak for those other jurisdictions. This is something I would definitely clarify with them. Pls let me know what happens next. This is a novel situation and I want to see how it ends. Thanks.

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