Canadian workplace injury rates by province

This page exists because the question "what is the average injury rate in Canada" has no honest one number answer, and almost everybody gives one anyway.

The published provincial rates

Every figure below is the most recent published by the board that produced it, with the measure named as that board names it. That naming is the important column.

Source: WCB-Alberta 2025 Annual Report; WorkSafeBC 2025 Annual Report; Saskatchewan WCB, 2025 Saskatchewan workplace injury statistics; Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba 2024 Annual Report; Government of Ontario, Occupational Health and Safety in Ontario 2022 to 2023; University of Regina, 2026 Report on Work Fatality and Injury Rates in Canada. Reviewed August 2026.

Why you cannot read that as a league table

Look at the second column again. Six rows, four different measures.

Alberta publishes two rates and they are not the same thing. The lost-time claim rate counts claims where somebody missed time. The disabling injury rate is broader, and at 2.5 it is nearly double the 1.4. Quote either one and you are telling the truth. Quote whichever suits your argument and you are doing something else.

Saskatchewan's 3.68 is not evidence that Saskatchewan is dangerous. It is a total injury rate, which includes accepted claims where nobody lost any time at all. Most provinces do not publish an equivalent figure, so Saskatchewan looks worse largely for being more forthcoming. Its comparable number, the time loss rate, is 1.66, which is the lowest on this table.

Manitoba publishes three rates, including one nobody else does. Alongside a time loss rate of 2.6 and an all injury rate of 4.9, it reports a severe injury rate of 0.54. That third measure is arguably the most useful number on this entire table, because severity is what a rate is usually being used as a proxy for, and Manitoba is the only jurisdiction here that measures it directly.

Ontario reports two rates for two classes of employer. Schedule 1 is the insured pool, at 1.30. Schedule 2 is self insured employers, largely public sector, at 2.39. Neither is "Ontario's injury rate", and quoting one without saying which is how a single province ends up with two contradictory figures in circulation.

The denominators differ. Some boards report per 100 workers, some per 100 full time workers and some per 100 person-years, which handle part time and seasonal work differently. In an industry with a heavy seasonal swing, that difference is not academic.

The national fatality picture, and the number that surprises people

The University of Regina publishes an annual report on work fatality and injury rates using data from the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada. It is the closest thing Canada has to a single authoritative national picture.

For 2024, Canadian compensation boards accepted 1,042 work-related death claims.

Source: University of Regina, 2026 Report on Work Fatality and Injury Rates in Canada, authored by Sean Tucker and Anya Keefe, using AWCBC data. Reviewed August 2026.

Occupational disease killed more Canadian workers than traumatic injury, by a factor of about 1.7. That is the finding worth sitting with, because it inverts what most safety programs are built around.

The traumatic deaths are the ones that stop a site and make the news. The disease deaths are the result of an exposure twenty or thirty years earlier, usually asbestos, silica or diesel exhaust, and they do not appear in any short term statistic. A company can post an excellent TRIF every year for a decade while quietly building a liability that lands in the 2050s.

The reported disease fatality rate also varies enormously by province, at 7.9 per 100,000 workers in Newfoundland and Labrador, 5.1 in Alberta and 4.7 in Ontario. Some of that is genuine industrial history and some of it is how readily a board accepts a disease claim decades after the exposure.

Ontario's own reporting shows the same pattern independently. For 2022 the province recorded 264 allowed workplace fatalities, made up of 174 occupational disease deaths against 90 traumatic ones, with COVID-19 deaths counted separately again on top. Construction accounted for 31 per cent of the traumatic fatalities, ahead of transportation and warehousing at 19 per cent and manufacturing at 13 per cent.

Two different sources, two different years, same conclusion. The thing most likely to kill a Canadian worker is not the thing safety programs are built to prevent.

Manitoba accepted 22 fatality claims in 2024, against 27 in Saskatchewan and 144 in Alberta. Those counts track workforce size and industrial mix rather than anything about how well each province is run, and they should not be read as a ranking either.

What this means for your own number

Your TRIF is not one of these rates, and the difference matters when a client puts them side by side.

A provincial rate counts accepted compensation claims across a whole jurisdiction. Your TRIF counts recordable injuries against your own hours on a 200,000 hour basis. Different population, different definition, different denominator. They are not interchangeable, and a client who compares your 2.4 against a provincial 1.4 and concludes you are worse than average has compared two unlike things.

That is worth understanding before somebody does it to you in a prequalification review. What TRIF clients actually require covers the thresholds that get set in practice, which come from the client's own risk appetite rather than from any of the numbers on this page.

Using these figures

They are published by public bodies and quoting them is normal. Two requests if you cite this page.

Name the measure, not just the number. "Alberta's lost-time claim rate was 1.4 per 100 workers in 2025" is a true sentence. "Alberta's injury rate was 1.4" invites the reader to compare it against something incompatible.

Go to the primary source where you can, and use the source line under each table above to find it. Boards revise figures, and a rate quoted from a secondary source is a rate nobody has checked since.

Related

• Safety metrics and injury rates is the hub.
• The TRIF calculator works out your own number.
• What counts as a recordable injury decides what goes into it.
• How to actually lower your rate is the practitioner answer.
• COR certification is the program most Canadian contractors are measured against alongside these numbers.