EDMONTON — Alberta’s worker safety agency was lax on enforcement and hid the true number of companies that refused to make safety improvements, the province’s auditor general reported Wednesday.
A five-month review found that the Department of Occupational Health and Safety suspended compliance orders filed against dozens of companies for no apparent reason.
These companies had some of the worst safety records in Alberta, with injury rates up to four times higher than the provincial average, says the report by acting auditor general Merwan Saher.
But when the auditors looked more closely, they found that in many cases the department had suspended the compliance orders simply to make its own statistics look better.
“This practice skews compliance statistics and may present management with a compliance picture more favourable than it really is,” Saher said in his report.
In most cases, the compliance orders were reopened in the next fiscal year with no evidence that the companies took any action to improve worker safety.
Saher also found in many cases, companies that ignored safety violations were still getting rebates from the province under a program that rewards firms with good worker safety records.
The violations that went unchecked for years range from fire and explosion hazards to lack of hearing and eye protection.
Alberta has one of the highest rates of worker deaths in Canada with 166 deaths in 2008.
Liberal Opposition Leader David Swann says the auditor’s findings show that Premier Ed Stelmach’s Tory government has “failed to act in the public interest.”
“This is a very serious dereliction of duty and misrepresentation,” said Swann. “Lying to the public about the state of affairs in occupational health and safety.”
But Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk, who took over the portfolio in January, says he’s already taking action.
He’s asked for a list of the employers who are ignoring worker safety violations, including some firms that he says appear to be “thumbing their noses” at the Occupational Health and Safety Code.
“There’s a new sheriff in town, there’s no doubt about it,” Lukaszuk said in an interview.
“I will not be hesitant in using any and all enforcement tools that the current legislature allows in cases where employers choose to be non-compliant.”
NDP Leader Brian Mason says it’s “reprehensible” that the government has covered up its lax enforcement of safety violations.
“They’ve let companies that have terrible safety records continue to operate without any sanctions,” Mason told reporters. “Not only that, but they’ve lifted these compliance orders so their statistics look better than they actually are.”
The auditor also found that the department almost never uses the courts when safety compliance orders are repeatedly ignored.
The auditor general also found huge cost overruns as Alberta Treasury Branches overhauls its banking and accounting systems.
The original cost of the upgrade has nearly doubled to more than $300 million and the project is now one year behind schedule.
“The root causes of the delay and cost increases should have been identified and dealt with much earlier,” says the auditor’s report
Saher also said he has not seen anyone in ATB management held accountable for this major cost escalation.
The report indicates that it took nearly a year for ATB officials to report to their board of directors that the cost of this upgrade had almost doubled.
The auditor’s report also raises questions about whether Alberta taxpayers got good value for 18 schools that were built under a public-private partnership agreement.
Although a government news release in September 2008 boosted of $118 million in savings, the auditor points out that this was never confirmed with a value for money report as the government had promised.
The auditor found an error in the government’s calculations that overstated the savings by roughly $20 million.
“Albertans are not informed about the means by which the department obtained value for money,” says the report.
The auditor general also issued a warning to senior officials at Alberta’s colleges and universities over their use of credit cards and expense accounts.
The audit found a long list of questionable expenses, including golf, dinner and liquor at a staff retreat for Grant MacEwan University.
At the University of Calgary, two senior managers submitted $11,000 in hotel and credit-card expenses without details on how the money was spent.
The auditor general also wants to know how senior government bureaucrats and ministerial aides are using their credit cards.
A review of $55,000 in expenses over 18 months found nearly half this money was reimbursed without detailed receipts to support the spending.