The Government of B.C. has confirmed that changes to the language and numbering of the Workers Compensation Act, which they had proposed last year, will come into effect on April 6, 2020.
These amendments are not substantive in content but will require WorkSafeBC, associations, and employers to update materials that reference the Act. The changes include a reorganization of the Act’s components, some new wording in various sections, and deletion of provisions that have been repealed or are no longer needed.
Guide to changes in the searchable online OHS Regulation
Our online Searchable OHS Regulation & related materialsis one of the key resources we’ll be updating. The searchable Regulation will have to reflect the revised Act when it takes effect, which will affect many of the related URLs.
To assist you with this transition, we’ve developed Link changes for OHS provisions of the Workers Compensation Act 2019, which provides links to the health and safety provisions of the Workers Compensation Act as they will be in the searchable Regulation when the revisions take effect on April 6. Section numbers from the 1996 Act are given, along with their corresponding division numbers, section numbers, and section names in the 2019 Act.
Additional resources
For more details on the changes, the provincial government has made the following resources available on their Revision of the Workers Compensation Act webpage:
Revised version of the Workers Compensation Act — View the full version of the revised Act.
Table of Concordance — Find where a section in the existing legislation is located in the proposed revised Act.