Check against delivery

Mr. Speaker, with the new year ahead of us, I am pleased to highlight the Workers’ Safety and Compensation Commission’s, or WSCC, new Strategic Plan, Paths Towards Safety
2023 – 2027, which is available for everyone to view on WSCC’s website.

This foundational document, along with ongoing input from employers, partners, and workers, will guide the Commission’s work over the next five years. WSCC’s mission is to promote workplace health and safety while providing no-fault insurance to employers and care for injured workers. The new Strategic Plan provides a road map of how the WSCC will move forward by identifying the short-, medium-, and long-term goals during the five-year strategic cycle.

WSCC’s three priority areas are:

Advancing Safety Outcomes to eliminate workplace diseases and injuries. WSCC has an ongoing commitment to support safe workplaces, to continuously raise awareness of safety rights and responsibilities for both workers and employers, and to prevent and reduce workplace accidents and injuries.

Delivering Quality Services by enhancing processes and empowering staff to provide timely, accessible, understandable, effective, and culturally safe services and clear communication to Northerners. Quality services incorporate WSCC’s organizational values of respect, engagement, integrity, openness, cultural safety, excellence, and stewardship, and are a foundation of our mission.

Ensuring Financial Sustainability so that every injured worker is cared for now and into the future. The WSCC maintains the Workers’ Protection Fund, which covers injured worker claims costs by using a fiscally responsible funding mechanism that is fair to all employers.

A high level of transparency, accountability and engagement is critical to the success of the Commission’s work. Each section of this plan describes the performance measures that show progress. WSCC will use these measures to guide their annual corporate planning process and to report on progress each year.

There is no single path to achieve the WSCC’s vision to eliminate workplace diseases and injuries. However, Paths Towards Safety represents the many different approaches that they take to make workplaces safer every day, as well as the diverse pathways many employers across all communities in the Northwest Territories take to improve safety culture at each worksite.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.