Month In Review – Northwest Territories

LAWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

Incident Reporting

Jul 18: Effective today, Northwest Territories employers who are required to report an incident, injury or dangerous occurrence to the WSCC within 3 days, must submit their Employer’s Report of Incident, Injury, and Fatality form on WSCC Connect. The system will then ask if a worker was injured OR fatally injured during the incident. If yes, the system will automatically direct submitters to the updated Injury and Fatality Section. Employers must submit one Injury or Fatality Report for every individual who was injured or fatally injured during the incident.

Action Point: Use the OHS Insider policy template to create a legally sound incident investigation and reporting policy for your workplace.

Emergency Response

Jul 3: The Northwest Territories Human Rights Commission issued a brochure calling on employers to ensure that their emergency response plans account for the mobility-impaired, elderly, disabled and other disadvantaged groups that may need special help in evacuating during a flood, fire or other emergency.

Action Point: Ensure your company’s workplace emergency response and evacuation policy accounts for the disabled.

New Laws

Sep 8: That’s the deadline for non-profit and for-profit services that offer services to help employers in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut improve workplace safety and comply with OHS laws to apply for the WSCC’s OHS Funding Program. Applicants can request funding of $5,000 to $250,000 per project.

New Laws

Jul 2: The federal government announced new Low Carbon Economy Fund support for a pair of projects in the Northwest Territories, including $2.3 million to improve energy efficiency and low carbon heating at Denendeh Manor in Yellowknife, and $4.6 million for ground-mounted solar installation kits to Inuvialuit-owned cabins in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.

New Laws

Jul 28: Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon signed a Memorandum of Understanding to create a new Territorial Trade Zone, a kind of Northern Common Market through which goods, services and labour will flow freely. Among other things, the territories will create a shared credential registry allowing qualified professionals to ply their trade in all 3 territories.

Environmental

Jul 31: The GNWT is completing the final year of its program to remove hazardous waste stockpiles from solid waste sites in communities across the Northwest Territories. Nearly one million kilograms of hazardous waste have been removed from 20 communities since the program began in 2022. Nahanni Butte, Jean Marie River, Aklavik, Inuvik, Délı̨nę, Łutsel K’e, and Fort Resolution will be the final communities to have hazardous waste removed from their solid waste sites.