Abstract : Globally, s ignificantly less attention has been devoted to documenting and regulating working conditions and occupational safety and health (OSH) in aquaculture, than to
regulating food safety and environmental threats in the sector. There are diverse and significant OSH hazards,
as well as high rates of injuries and fatalities in aquaculture relative to national/provincial averages. This presentation discusses findings from a review and comparative analysis of OSH aquaculture regulatory instruments and operational standards with in Atlantic Canada and Norway. Norway exports
salmonid aquaculture research, technologies, organizational approaches and indeed aq uaculture corporate ownership worldwide including into Canada. Canada’s salmonid aquaculture industry is newer and smaller but poised for rapid expansion. The hazard profiles in Canada and Norway are similar despite the different scale and history of salmon aquaculture in Norway and Canada, but the regulatory regimes for OSH are quite different.
Research Question and Methods: The core research question is : could OSH standards and other tools from Norway be adapted for use in Canada to rapidly and effectively ramp up OSH regulatory practice and capacity given differences in industry scale and regulatory regimes? We explore the question through a review and comparison of the various regulations and standards as well as industry organization and OSH infrastructures (regulatory regimes) in the two countries using available standards and results from key informant interviews.
Findings: Canada’s aquaculture industry is much smaller than that in Norway and concentrated in British Columbia and on the Atlantic coast – in some cases in small, remote communities. It is also more mixed with larger shares of shellfish aquaculture than in Norway. Norway has a unitary government, with all operators governed by the same set of regulations and held to the same standards . Norway also has a highly developed OSH regulatory framework
that differs in significant ways from the Canadian OSH framework including in its extensive reliance on company-level risk assessment processes supported by substantial and in some cases specialized inspectorate capacity. Norway has developed det ailed industry-specific OSH regulations inclusive of requirements for risk assessment of work environments and hazardous activities, standards on the design and installation of net pens, support vessel design, training of personnel and for aquaculture-related diving. Canada has a federal system of government and a complex regulatory regime consisting of both federal and provincial levels of governance
for activities that bridge land and marine sites, and variances in both regulations and enforcement agencies between provinces. In Canada, it is difficult to access reasonably accurate data on injuries and fatalities at a national or regional level and there has been very limited research on injury rates, exposures and on prevention. Companies have a general duty to protect the OSH of their workers and to have a safety plan. Atlantic Canadian provinces are very limited in both their scope and capacity
to identify, control or eliminate exposures and to monitor the effectiveness of interventions in terms of hazard and injury/fatality reduction.
They lack the kind of industry-specific standards and requirements for aquaculture OSH found in Norway. Given the smaller size of the industry and the different regulatory frameworks for OSH, the Canadian marine finfish aquaculture industry might be able to benefit from the rapid transfer and adaptation of some Norwegian tools and practices.