Harassment and violence prevention regulations: the review

What do the harassment and violence prevention regulations require?

They require the employer and the applicable partner to carry out a work place assessment together, then to build a policy, training and a resolution process around it. The applicable partner is the policy committee or, if there is none, the work place committee or the health and safety representative. Where the two cannot agree on a joint matter, the Regulations say the employer's decision prevails, and the employer keeps a record of that decision and the reasons for it.

The assessment has two steps: identifying the risk factors that contribute to harassment and violence in the work place, then, within six months, developing and implementing preventive measures. The Code defines harassment and violence as any action, conduct or comment that can reasonably be expected to cause offence, humiliation or other physical or psychological injury or illness to an employee. The policy has eleven listed elements, including the employer's mission statement and the support measures available to employees, and training has to be specific to the culture, conditions and activities of the work place.

For individual occurrences, the employer designates a person or work unit to receive notices. That person or unit contacts the principal party within seven days, efforts to resolve begin within 45 days, and the process is in general to be completed within one year. Each year, on or before 1 March, the employer sends an annual report to the Head of Compliance and Enforcement.

What does the three-year review cover?

Subsection 5(3) sets the review: the employer and the applicable partner jointly review the work place assessment every three years and update it if necessary. The Labour Program's guidance says its purpose is to confirm that the risk factors in the initial assessment still apply, that new ones have been identified, and that the preventive measures in place adequately mitigate the risk.

The guidance adds that the review should draw on all reports, studies, data and new information that can help, and that an assessment can use employee and management surveys, interviews including exit interviews, and internal incident and complaint metrics. Between reviews, the assessment is monitored and updated if a risk factor changes or a measure stops working, and certain occurrences trigger a review of their own.

Several other duties run on the same interval. The policy is reviewed at least every three years, as is the training. Employees are trained at least every three years after their first session, and the designated recipient and the employer undergo the training on the same interval.

Where does workload fit in the assessment?

It fits in the Labour Program's guidance on risk factors. Under job factors, the guidance lists “excessive workload or inadequate resources to complete work” next to limited control over how work is done, unreasonable or tight deadlines leading to high stress, and confusing, conflicting or unclear roles. The Regulations themselves do not use the word workload. Section 8 asks the employer and the applicable partner to take into account the culture, conditions, activities and organizational structure of the work place, and the measures in place to protect psychological health and safety.

OHA's Five Loads give those job factors a finer grain. Limited control over how work is done and decisions that get reopened tend to show up as decisional load. Interruptions, and real work that only advances after hours, show up as cognitive load. Unclear roles, and one person being the route for everyone's input, show up as relational load. Stacked approvals and double entry show up as administrative load. The separation matters because each calls for a different change to the work.

A joint committee that brings a dated reading of how work is organized to the three-year review has something to set beside its incident counts. For how that reading is taken, see what a capacity diagnostic measures. A Capacity Circle™ then measures the same load again at day 90, so the next review starts from two readings instead of an impression.

What do the federal reporting figures show?

In 2024, federally regulated employers reported 7,523 harassment and violence occurrences to the Labour Program, up 5.7% from 7,114 in 2023. The 5,137 employer reports covered about 1.25 million employees, and large employers, those with 500 or more full-time equivalents, accounted for 6,097 of the occurrences, or 81%.

Reporting differs sharply by size: 85.0% of large employers reported at least one occurrence, against 5.9% of small ones. The Labour Program says organizational culture may play a critical role in employees' willingness to report, and that the figures cover only occurrences for which a notice was formally submitted, so prevalence is often underrepresented. A count of notices is one input to the review; it does not by itself describe the conditions people work in. The psychosocial hazards in the workplace post sets out where those conditions can be read.

Is the Canada Labour Code itself under review?

Yes. Section 139.2 of the Code requires the Minister to commence a review of the Part II provisions on harassment and violence five years after the section came into force and every five years after that, then to prepare a report, which is tabled in Parliament. The Labour Program says the first legislative review began in January 2026 and that its findings, with the annual report data, will help shape future improvements to the prevention framework.

That is a different review from the employer's. The Minister reviews the law; the employer and the applicable partner review their own work place assessment every three years.