Summary#
Bill 77, the Speaking Out About, and Reporting On, Workplace Violence and Harassment Act, 2025, would amend Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. It would require hospitals and long-term care homes to publish monthly incident counts and prohibit reprisals against workers who, in good faith, take specified health-and-safety actions, including speaking publicly about possible violations. Its stated goal is to protect workers who speak out and increase public reporting.
- Employers that are hospitals or long-term care homes must publish the number of workplace violence incidents and the number of workplace harassment incidents from the previous month on their websites, at least monthly.
- No person, including an employer, may take a reprisal against a worker for the listed actions taken in good faith. These include reporting violence or harassment and providing information or making a complaint to the public about violence, harassment, or another possible violation of the Act or its regulations.
- A reprisal is any measure that adversely affects a worker’s employment. Listed examples include ending or threatening to end employment; demotion, discipline or suspension; job, location, wage or hours changes; and intimidation or coercion.
- The bill would take effect on Royal Assent. It creates no separate agency or program in the supplied text.
What it means for you#
- Workers covered by the Act: The bill would expressly protect workers from employment-related reprisals for the listed good-faith actions, including public disclosures. It does not require workers to report publicly.
- Hospital and long-term care home employers: They must publish monthly counts for both violence and harassment incidents that took place at their facility.
- People viewing those websites: They would be able to see incident counts. The bill requires counts, not details about individual incidents.
- Other employers and the public: The reporting duty applies only to employers that are hospitals or long-term care homes. The bill does not directly change taxes, benefits, or property rights.
Money#
No publicly available information on the bill’s cost is provided.
- The bill requires hospitals and long-term care homes to publish counts, which may require staff time and other administrative work; no amount is estimated.
- The bill provides no funding, fee, fine, or other payment.
What is unclear#
- The supplied material does not include the current text of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. I cannot verify which protections or reporting rules already exist, or how this amendment would interact with them.
- The bill does not set a method or standard for counting incidents, or explain what counts as an incident for reporting.
- It does not specify a reporting format, where on a website the counts must appear, or how long they must remain available.
- The bill does not add a process for making or deciding a reprisal complaint. The supplied material does not show what processes under existing law would apply.
- The bill does not define “good faith” or explain how its public-disclosure protection interacts with other legal duties.
Case for#
- A possible argument for the bill is that public monthly counts could make workplace violence and harassment more visible at hospitals and long-term care homes.
- Protecting workers who speak publicly about possible violations could reduce the risk that fear of employment consequences silences them.
- The bill lists examples of reprisals, which may help clarify that retaliation can include more than dismissal.
Case against#
- The bill requires counts but no common counting method or context. Different facilities could report numbers in different ways, making them hard to compare.
- The bill does not say how the public reporting duty would protect personal information or handle sensitive incident details, though it requires counts rather than incident details.
- The bill’s reprisal definition covers any measure that adversely affects employment, but the amendment does not set out how complaints would be assessed or decided.