Advocating for change

Friends and supporters of a live-in nanny who died are advocating for changes to the Ontario Health and Safety Act.

The woman slipped and fell in the garage of the home she worked in.
even though it was her place of work, the act specifically excludes workers in a private residence.

And for that reason it may be harder for friends of this woman to get their desired outcome.

First here are the details.

Maritas Angana was a Filipino nanny who had only been in Ontario working for a few months. She was here legally when she hit her head and suffered a brain hemmorhage on November 28th. Angana fell into a coma and died on December 2nd.

Today, her supporters were at Queen’s Park to argue that in home workers should be treated the same way as other workers.

Liza Draman, Caregivers Action Centre: “Meritas died at work. It is the responsibility of the Workplace Safety Insurance Board to pay the cost of returning her body to the Phillipines and adequately compensate her family.”

We contacted the Ministry of Labour to find out exactly what is covered. They provided a statement. In it they confirmed that:
“The OHSA does not apply to work performed in a private home by an owner, occupant or a live-in caregiver. The reason for this is that there are restrictions on OHSA in private homes. The restrictions recognize that homes are private property. And that’s about as far as they went.”

For more clarity, we also talked to labour lawyer, John Hyde, from the firm Levitt and Grossman. He says that the Health and Safety Act was never intended to cover a private home but only a private business: “It’s hard to suggest a personal residence is a business. It doesn’t provide a service to the public, to any particular group. To apply these onerous provisions and the significant penalties to persons who simply own the home and have hired a person to come in to act as a nanny, I think that’s ludicrous.”

The Ministry of Labour is investigating but because of the restrictions mentioned before, they cannot enforce any decision made under the act.