LAWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

WHMIS

Jun 17: Major revisions to the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Regulations (TDGR) align Canadian rules with the United Nations Model Regulations and other international codes. Major changes include updated railway buffer car requirements, new Emergency Response Assistance Plan (ERAP) rules for anhydrous ammonia, and international air/marine framework updates. Deadline to comply: June 4, 2027.

Training

Jun 17: Rather than simply ensure workers are “adequately trained,” the revised TDGR require employers to perform on-the-job assessment to verify they’re fully competent in the specific hazardous material tasks they perform. TDGR training must meet CAN/CGSB-192.3 with General Awareness and Function-Specific modules. Employers must keep a current inventory of dangerous goods duties for all staffers to customize training pathways.

Action Point: Find out more about the new TDGR competency-based training rules and how to comply with them.

WHMIS

Jun 17: Newly revised TDGR aligning Canadian regulations with international standards include amendments to dangerous goods marks, classification information, shipping names, and packaging requirements. They also revise TDGR placard and labelling rules. The deadline to comply is June 4, 2027.

Transportation Safety

Jun 17: Newly effective TDGR amendments allow for the use of special permits issued under U.S. regulations for transportation of means of containment with residue of dangerous goods by road and railway vehicles from Canada to the United States. The Regulations also rewrite Part 12 of the TDGR to modernize air transportation requirements and update provisions for transport to remote locations and exemptions for medical, scientific, industrial, aerial, and enforcement activities.

Action Point: Find out how to comply with TDGR documentation requirements.

WHMIS

Jun 17: Amendments to the TDGR impose new requirements governing offering for transport, handling, and transporting primary lithium metal cells and rechargeable lithium-ion cells. The current TDGR don’t address lithium cells and batteries, which creates misalignment with U.S. and international standards in which these items are addressed.

Emergency Response

Jun 17: Closing a gap in the current regulations, the amended TDGR require shippers that move high volumes of anhydrous ammonia via rail tank cars to have a fully approved, active ERAP in place before transit begins. The change addresses the severe inhalation hazards posed by large-scale derailments of anhydrous ammonia.

Action Point: Find out how to comply with TDGR ERAP and emergency response requirements.

First Aid

Jun 15: Thanks to more widespread availability of naloxone kits and other factors, national drug toxicity death rates declined by 23% in 2025 compared to 2024. However, despite the recent declines, toxic drug overdose deaths remain a big problem in Canada, according to Health Canada.

Action Point: Find out how to implement a workplace Naloxone Program to save lives and prevent opioid overdose deaths at your site.

Infectious Illness 

Jul 1: Effective through August 29, Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and foreign travelers seeking to enter Canada who’ve been in the Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan within the previous 21 days must undergo assessment for Ebola upon arrival. While in the country, they must have access to a location where they can safely stay for 21 days.

Action Point: Find out whether fear of Ebola infection is grounds for an OHS work refusal.

PPE

July 13: July 13 is the final day of public consultations on proposed changes to harmonize the Canadian Occupational Health and Safety (COHS) Regulations personal protective equipment (PPE) standards with provincial and territorial requirements. The new federal rules also require employers to have a qualified person verify that mandatory PPE properly fits male and female workers.

Action Point: Find out why standard PPE leaves women workers exposed to injury risk and how to implement a strategy for ensuring that the PPE you select is suitable.

New Laws

Jun 22: The Government of Canada launched a new Nuclear Energy Strategy to strengthen energy affordability, security, and sustainability by building new reactors, promoting uranium development, and developing a national nuclear workforce. Nuclear power currently generates approximately 13% of Canada’s electricity from 17 CANDU reactors in Ontario and New Brunswick.

New Laws

Jun 3: The Canadian government extended key steel and aluminum tariff measures due to expire at the end of the month for another year. The steel tariff-rate quotas (TRQ) regime for imports from non-CUSMA partners is extended to June 27, 2027, and the horizontal tariff relief for eligible steel and aluminum products from the US is extended to June 30, 2027. Current quota levels for the TRQs will continue to be based on 20% of 2024 volumes for partners without a free trade agreement with Canada, and 75% for partners with a free trade agreement in force with Canada. Imports exceeding quota limits will continue to be subject to a 50% tariff.

New Laws

Jun 19: Canada imposed a new 10% surtax on global imports of canned vegetables for up to 200 days. In accordance with Canada’s international trade obligations, the new tariff doesn’t apply to canned vegetables from the U.S., Mexico, Israel, Chile, and developing countries. Meanwhile, the Canadian International Trade Tribunal is continuing its inquiry into whether increased imports of these products is causing serious injury to Canadian vegetable processors.

New Laws

Jun 12: Bill C-35, which passed First Reading, bans the importation of goods produced by forced labour. Under the legislation, the Minister of Foreign Affairs would establish a list of goods in respect for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect are produced by forced labour. Persons importing goods on the list must, at a customs officer’s request, provide the Canada Border Services Agency required information to bring the goods into the country.

Industry Challenges

Jun 4: The federal government launched a new Action Plan to support the country’s vital Forest Sector. Priority areas: i. Securing a competitive and predictable supply of wood fibre; ii. Supporting innovation and modernization; iii. Expanding domestic and international market opportunities; and iv. Supporting workers and communities through skills development measures.

New Laws

July 15: July 15 is the effective date of new federal regulations allowing the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants to impose tighter controls on immigration consultants and impose stricter penalties on consultants who break the rules.

Privacy

Jun 15: First reading for Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, governing how businesses collect, use, and disclose personal information. Canada’s current private-sector privacy law, PIPEDA, is more than 25 years old and was written before artificial intelligence (AI) came into mass use. Highlights of the PPCDA: i. recognition of privacy as a fundamental right; ii. new restrictions on handline children’s personal information online; iii. new transparency standards requiring organizations to describe how they use personal information; iv. new rights of individuals to request deletion or disposal of their personal information; and v. new limits on transparency pricing and other business uses of personal data.

Action Point: Find out more about how privacy laws affect workplace safety.

Privacy

Jun 10: The newly tabled Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) requires social media providers and AI chatbots to protect children and other vulnerable individuals against online harm. To be enforced by an agency called the Digital Safety Commission of Canada (DSCA), the law requires service operators to perform risk identification and implement a Digital Safety Plan outlining measures to address identified risks, including safety-focused design features, labeling of harmful content, and blocking children’s online access to potentially harmful content.

Accessibility

Jun 1: Accessibility Standards Canada published a new standard for the delivery of services in an inclusive and accessible way. To meet the new ASC-5.2.1: Accessible Service Delivery, organizations must offer services in multiple accessible ways, communicate via plain language and accessible formats, respond to individual needs in a timely and equitable way, involve disabled people in services design, train staff to deliver accessible and inclusive services, ensure access for people using supports, and provide alternatives during service disruptions.

Action Point: Find out how accessibility laws affect your OHS program and how to ensure your workplace emergency response plan accounts for the disabled.

Workplace Harassment

Jun 18: Royal Assent for Bill C-9 making it a crime to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group by displaying certain symbols in a public place or intentionally obstruct or intimidate a person from attending a mosque or other public place of religious worship and repealing the requirement that the Attorney General consent to the prosecution of hate propaganda offences.

Action Point: Don’t assume workers will tell you if they’re being harassed. Use the OHS Insider Assessment Questionnaire template to uncover hidden harassment, bullying, and stalking problems at your workplace.

Workplace Violence

Jun 18: Newly passed Bill C-16 adding new sexual violence protections to the Criminal Code, including a new offence for engaging in a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct toward an intimate partner and making it a first degree murder to commit what’s called “femicide” (when the victim is female), defined as murder against an intimate partner as part of a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct, sexual violence, human trafficking or motivated by hate. The bill would also provide for tougher penalties for manslaughter committed in those circumstances while making it easier for victims to prove they were subject to criminal harassment.

Action Point: Find out how to implement an effective Workplace Violence and Harassment Compliance Game Plan at your site.

Workplace Violence

Jun 17: Bill C-225 amending the Criminal Code to create new offences for engaging in intimate partner violence and ban peace officers from releasing persons arrested for an intimate partner offence if they’ve committed such an offence in the last five years or are at large on a release order for such an offence, received Royal Assent.

Environmental

Jun 5: Bill S-4, which would extend the Energy Efficiency Act to include online sales and digital labels, passed the Senate and received First Reading in the House. First enacted in 1995, the Act is designed to cut consumption of energy-using products while enabling consumers to make informed decisions about the energy consumption of the products they purchase.

Environmental

May 14: The federal government launched annual consultations on proposed amendments to the list of terrestrial species protected under the Species At Risk Act (SARA). Deadline to comment: October 14, 2026.

CASES

Drugs & Alcohol: Double Pre-Employment Drug Testing of New Trainees Is Unreasonable

After extensive hearings, a federal arbitrator ruled that three parts of a railway’s drug and alcohol testing policy were unreasonable: i. Requiring newly hired trainees for safety sensitive positions to undergo both pre-employment drug testing and a later second drug test before completing their training; ii. A minimum 28-day cannabis ban; and iii. Reducing oral fluid drug testing thresholds from 10ng/ml to 4ng/ml and 2ng/ml. However, the arbitrator upheld other provisions challenged by the union as not unreasonable [Teamsters Canada Rail Conference – Maintenance of Way Employees Division v Canadian Pacific Kansas City Railway Company, 2026 CanLII 60171 (CA LA), June 19, 2026].

Action Point: Although this case turned on the reasonableness of the terms of the policy, workplace drug testing cases are often determined based not on what a testing policy says, but how it’s actually carried out. Find out how to implement a legally sound Drugs and Alcohol Testing Policy at your own workplace.

Training: Pilots Not Entitled to Overtime for Cancelled Safety Training Session

The union claimed that airline pilots who agreed to take flight simulator safety training on their day off were entitled to overtime pay for the day even though the session was canceled. The federal arbitrator disagreed and tossed the grievance. The compensatory allowance provided for in the collective agreement to offset the inconvenience of having to sacrifice a day of rest to perform a task at the employer’s request only applies when an employee actually works, the arbitrator reasoned. But the pilots were released from the simulator session before their scheduled work began. Since they didn’t work, they weren’t entitled to increased pay [Airline Pilots Association v. Air Transat AT Inc., 2026 CanLII 52452 (CA SA), June 1, 2026].