Corporate

 Workplace Safety & Prevention Services  | 8 Agriculture Under the Agri-food Workplace Protection Program in 2020/21, WSPS directly worked with 82 businesses to keep their workers safe and developed 4 resource toolkits for meat processing, field/crop, greenhouses, and livestock subsectors, containing a total of 38 adapted tools. In the spring of 2021, and in partnership with local and provincial governments, WSPS and OMAFRA also produced a series of eight interactive regional webinars for 391 agriculture workplaces with temporary foreign workers and received 39 requests for follow-up assistance. Assisting landscaping businesses with reopening Landscape Ontario (LO) has put a strong focus on supporting their 3,400 members in reopening safely. The association invited WSPS consultants to present at several town hall meetings in 2020/21, on topics such as "keeping your employees safe as you continue to re-open your business" and "ways to prepare for the second wave". WSPS also participated in LO's first virtual conference in August 2020, presenting a session on "how to mitigate if you have a positive COVID test in your company" to 309 participants. The WSPS Mental Health Strategic Advisor was also invited to be part of a podcast on mental health in the workplace to assist landscape businesses in managing the stresses of the pandemic. Protecting the workers who produce our food To manage the risk of COVID-19 in some of the businesses in our food supply chain, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) approached WSPS to provide consulting and training services to agriculture producers and provincially regulated meat processors. As an essential front-line business providing safe food to Ontarians, I would like to extend our appreciation for the remarkable support provided by Workplace Safety & Prevention Services throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. One call to WSPS and their dedicated team stepped forward and up to the plate to not only offer professional guidance and critical resources but to actually come onsite to provide assistance.   — MIKE MCLAUCHLAN, Sargent Farms

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