Hundred additional inspectors after alarming staff shortage
The Canadian federal government will hire one hundred new labour inspectors to oversee worker safety in federally regulated industries. The expansion is part of Bill C-39, the Building Canada Strong Act, introduced on September 21, 2026. The hundred new health and safety officers represent an increase of roughly 70 percent over the current federal inspection capacity.
The move follows an internal evaluation report by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), published in August 2026. It found that only about ninety active labour inspectors and senior investigators are currently available to enforce Part II of the Canada Labour Code. They are spread across sixteen offices in five regions and must oversee roughly 1.4 million workers at nearly 19,600 federally regulated employers.
Insufficient coverage in remote areas
The evaluation report drew on interviews with 29 officials and employer and worker representatives. Most cited insufficient staffing, geographic coverage gaps and limited training opportunities as the main obstacles to proactive inspections, particularly in remote regions. The capacity shortfall coincides with a rise in workplace fatalities at federally regulated sites: from 44 in 2021 to 71 in 2023.
Labour Minister Patty Hajdu underlined the importance of the measure: “Strong labour relations are essential to the success of Canadian workers, businesses and our economy.”
Broader overhaul of labour relations
Besides the new inspectors, Bill C-39 includes changes to the Canada Labour Code intended to speed up collective bargaining, and provides for 26 new staff at the Canada Industrial Relations Board to clear a growing backlog of complaints. Additional inspectors will also be deployed specifically to tackle worker misclassification, where employees are wrongly labelled as independent contractors.
Derrick Hynes, CEO of employer group FETCO, which represents federally regulated sectors, called on the government to be transparent about how the new inspectors will be deployed. He pointed specifically to the trucking industry, where the so-called “Driver Inc.” model classifies drivers as independent contractors to sidestep labour standards.
No timeline or budget for the expansion has yet been announced. The bill still has to go through committee review and then votes in both the House of Commons and the Senate before it becomes law.
Context
The International Labour Organization (ILO) uses a benchmark of roughly one labour inspector per 10,000 to 15,000 workers in industrialized economies. With ninety inspectors for 1.4 million workers, Canada’s federal ratio has so far been well below that standard, at best around one inspector per 15,500 workers. Even with a hundred additional inspectors, the ratio will still barely clear the lower end of the ILO benchmark, underscoring the scale of the previously identified shortfall. Additional source: ilo.org.
Source: Feds to hire 100 new health and safety officers under Bill C-39, September 24, 2026
