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We publish a lot of photos of people working on job sites – it’s one of my favourite kinds of content because I think it brings us together as an industry when we see others around the country doing what we do. Inevitably, some of those photos depict people not executing safety best practices. Lack of PPE; ladders at bad angles; lack of fall protection; power cords snaking around unsecured; standing under the buckets of excavators…etc. etc. When these photos appear, I’ll get a few phone calls and emails complaining about them (which means there are probably hundreds of others thinking the same thing). The complaints come from a very good place. People feel strongly that working safely is important and try hard to promote safe practices on their teams and in the industry as a whole. Often, they’ve been injured themselves and don’t want to see anyone else have the same experience. From there, they go to the position that Canadian Contractor should not depict unsafe practices. The concern is that, by doing so, we might mislead our audience as to what constitutes safes work or diminish the importance of working safely.
This position rests on the assumption that Canadian Contractor is boosting, advertising or otherwise promoting the companies we profile. We are not. We are simply telling their stories, as honestly and effectively as we can, so that you might read them and understand the business world you live in a little better. Our profiles are not intended to present the subject companies as avatars of contracting perfection or examples to follow. They are intended to give you an accurate picture of a fellow business in the industry.
Canadian Contractor is not here to lecture you – we lack standing to do that. You are the experts, not me. I am especially not any kind of safety expert and lack the expertise to evaluate whether someone is meeting the safety standards of the jurisdiction they are working in. I could access experts who could do this and run every photo by them, but I don’t see the point because, as noted above, it is not the role of this channel to be the industry’s hall monitor on safety. It boils down to this: Canadian Contractor promises to depict the industry as it is, not as we might wish it to be.
If we whitewashed our depiction of the industry and only showed workers wearing the hard hats, gloves and goggles they most certainly are not, would that help or hurt the goal of encouraging safe behaviour on job sites? Does pretending a problem doesn’t exist promote resolution of that problem? Or might one of the people inclined to complain about the photo hold that image up in front of their team and use it as an example of what not to do? I’m perfectly comfortable with our content being used in the latter way.
Some may feel the above amounts to a disavowal of our responsibility to promote safe work. In this era of activist journalism, it may surprise you to learn that we acknowledge no such responsibility. Advocacy and persuasion to change the behaviour of the Canadian construction industry is the business of others. We frequently give them a voice in this channel, whichever side of a particular issue they are on, so as to further a national conversation on the relevant issues. But except in clearly marked opinion pieces from me (like this one), we aren’t out to advance any editorial agenda beyond communication and conversation to benefit your business. Again, you are the experts, and you know best. We do acknowledge a responsibility to not advocate for unsafe behaviour. We’re never going to recommend you ignore, say, fall-arrest rules and work on roofs without tethers. What we will try to do is make everyone aware of the rules and best practices and let them make their own decisions.
The photos in our profiles are provided by the profile subject or approved by them if we took them. Sometimes readers express concern that the subject will get into trouble with the relevant safety authorities because of unsafe behaviour exhibited. That’s the subject’s concern and they are the one qualified to evaluate their level of exposure to risk. I have been known to double-check with a subject when they provide images that raise an eyebrow. But at the end of the day it is their call and their responsibility to protect their own liability.
If you are one of the dedicated and admirable individuals who are passionate about seeing Canadian construction workers work safely and never want to see another image of someone doing something unsafe, I recommend you do everything you can to ensure that actual workers on actual jobsites are actually not behaving unsafely. Then I won’t be able to get any photos of such behaviour.