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Annual Report 1999–2000

President’s Message

It gives me great pleasure to present to you the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission’s Annual Report for 1999–2000. This Report focuses on the second year of our renewal.

The past year has seen the coming together, once again, of our industry, labour and federal, provincial, territorial government stakeholders as partners with a common goal—helping the Commission find creative and innovative ways to serve the Canadian worker, the chemical industry and provincial/territorial/federal occupational safety and health programs. In the first such initiative since the Commission was established 12 years ago, we consulted with our tripartite stakeholders. Collectively, we wrote the strategic plan entitled Commission Renewal: Blueprint for Change.

The Blueprint outlines the steps that will revitalize and modernize this organization. With our stakeholders and Council of Governors we set out very important guiding values and principles, considered now to be the cornerstones of renewal: Timeliness – Accessibility – Transparency – Quality – Consistency – Competency – Respect – Fairness. These principles are not only relevant during renewal, but have become the benchmark against which all Commission activities are and will be measured.

The Blueprint received unanimous support from the Commission’s tripartite Council of Governors and was endorsed by the Minister of Health in October. We have published the Blueprint, to demonstrate our commitment to our renewal agenda, and sent it to all interested parties.

The next step was the laying of a solid foundation on which to rebuild the Commission. This past fall was devoted to the development of an operational workplan, a document written entirely by Commission staff, that would allow us to implement the strategic initiatives of the Blueprint.

The Workplan is the operational foundation that will direct the course of our work for the next few years. We believe that the Workplan serves as tangible evidence of our commitment to our stakeholders, and as such, we have widely published the Workplan. Many of the Workplan action items are well underway and some have already been completed.

Although we are changing the way we operate, what will not change is our role—balancing the right of chemical companies to protect trade secrets with the need of workers to have accurate health and safety information about the hazardous chemicals used in the workplace.

Weldon Newton