Two important amendments to Ontario Regulation 213/91 for Construction Projects come into force on January 1, 2026, that directly effect the health and safety of Local 793 members.
The first mandates that a Health Canada-licensed defibrillator must be available on projects where 20 or more workers are regularly employed for three months or longer.
The regulation requires constructors to maintain a supply of items to support the use of the defibrillator and prescribes where it must be located and how it must be maintained. Crucially, the amendment also requires at least one worker who has been trained in CPR and defibrillator operation to always be on site while work is in progress.
Local 793 supports the new defibrillator requirement and remains optimistic that constructors of projects which don’t meet the requirement thresholds of the new provision will nevertheless follow suit and make defibrillators available on smaller, shorter-duration projects as well.
It has been shown that when used together with CPR in the first few minutes after a cardiac arrest, defibrillators can improve cardiac arrest survival rates by more than 50 percent.
The second amendment relates to washroom facilities and requires that constructors must maintain a record of servicing washroom facilities and any associated cleaning and sanitizing for the previous six months or the duration of the project, whichever is shorter.
For more information on the changes made under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, click HERE.
