Bill 59

As part of the public consultations on Bill 59, An Act to modernize the occupational health and safety regime, Lobe submitted a brief to the National Assembly’s Committee on Labour and the Economy. For Lobe, this bill will have major human effects on the hearing health of thousands of Quebec workers.

“Bill 59, in its current form, makes its program less accessible to workers with occupational hearing injuries,” said Martin Cousineau, President and CEO of Lobe. “If the bill is passed as is, a significant number of workers suffering from occupational deafness will no longer be able to receive compensation. That will have major human impacts on the hearing health of thousands of workers who will no longer have access to CNESST claims.”

Recommendations Since the spirit of the bill is to improve the occupational health and safety system, Lobe has included in its brief three recommendations to better protect workers with occupational hearing injuries.

Recommendation 1: The scientific committee on occupational diseases, which would be created if the bill is adopted, should determine the eligibility thresholds for the claims of workers suffering from an occupational disease diagnosed as a noise-induced hearing loss.

Recommendation 2: An exception should be included in the regulation so that a person who has documented their hearing loss and undergone hearing tests can later prove that the hearing loss is, or was, caused by their work. Recommendation 3: The following should be considered physical causes of hearing problems in workers: deafness due to acoustic trauma, tinnitus related to occupational hearing loss, the incidence of ototoxic products as aggravating factors in occupational deafness, and unilateral hearing loss in the specific context of diseases caused by physical agents.

In sum, if Bill 59 is adopted in its current form, the criteria for occupational deafness would be limited, making its program less accessible to workers suffering from this type of injury.

The stigma associated with deafness has a significant impact on the time people with hearing loss take to see a hearing health professional. This must be taken into account in the bill.

The sharp rise in the number of cases of occupational deafness is unlikely to be reversed in the next few years, as many workers continue to work in noisy environments on a daily basis. It is estimated that between 287,000 and 350,000 workers are exposed to noise levels high enough to potentially cause occupational deafness.

Moreover, Quebec has the highest threshold for continuous noise levels in workplaces, with a maximum exposure level set at 90 dB(A) for 8 hours, as opposed to 85 dB(A) in the other Canadian provinces and territories (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, 2014). According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2018), the safe limit for a daily exposure of 8 hours is 80 dB(A).

Reference : file:///Users/gmslobe/Downloads/20-059f.pdf file:///Users/gmslobe/Downloads/019M_019M_Lobe.pdf