---
title: "Due diligence — the standard a Canadian employer is actually judged against"
description: "What due diligence means in Canadian OHS law, why it is a defence rather than a duty, and what a court looks for when it is claimed."
term: "Due diligence"
definition: "The level of care an employer is expected to have taken to prevent a harm, and the defence available when a charge is laid: not that nothing went wrong, but that every reasonable precaution in the circumstances was taken beforehand."
alsoKnownAs:
  - "Reasonable care"
  - "Every precaution reasonable in the circumstances"
jurisdiction: "Canada"
locale: "en-CA"
publishedOn: 2026-09-06
reviewedOn: 2026-09-06
canonical: "https://safeally.net/en-ca/glossary/due-diligence/"
sources:
  - label: "Canada Labour Code, Part II — occupational health and safety"
    url: "https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/L-2/"
    publisher: "Justice Laws Website"
  - label: "Occupational Health and Safety Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. O.1"
    url: "https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90o01"
    publisher: "Government of Ontario"
  - label: "Health and safety programs — the basics"
    url: "https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/basic.html"
    publisher: "CCOHS"
---

# Due diligence — the standard a Canadian employer is actually judged against

The level of care an employer is expected to have taken to prevent a harm, and the defence available when a charge is laid: not that nothing went wrong, but that every reasonable precaution in the circumstances was taken beforehand.

Canadian OHS statutes are written as general duties — take every precaution
reasonable in the circumstances — rather than as exhaustive lists of what to do.
Due diligence is the other half of that design: because the duty is open-ended,
the question after an incident is not "did you break rule 47" but "what had you
done, before it happened, that a reasonable employer would have done".

## What it means in practice

- **It is proved by records, not by intent.** The hazard assessment, the training
  sign-offs, the inspection reports, the dated corrective actions, the minutes
  of the joint committee. Precautions that were taken and not written down are
  precautions you cannot show.
- **It has to be current.** A hazard assessment from four years ago for a process
  that changed twice since is evidence against you, not for you.
- **It follows the delegation.** Assigning safety to a supervisor does not move
  the duty; it adds one. What the employer has to show is that the supervisor was
  competent, instructed, resourced and _supervised_.
- **Directors and officers are named personally** in several provincial acts, so
  this is not only a corporate exposure.

## What it is not

**It is not a duty you can point at in the statute.** Due diligence is a defence
recognised in law, and it only ever surfaces once something has gone wrong. That
is precisely why it cannot be assembled afterwards.

**It is not "we followed the regulation".** Compliance with a specific standard
is evidence of care, not a ceiling on it: where a foreseeable hazard is not
covered by any regulation, the general duty still applies.

**And it is not one standard across Canada.** The federal Code applies to about
six per cent of the workforce; the rest sit under provincial acts whose wording,
committee thresholds and prosecution practice genuinely differ. What satisfies a
Crown in Ontario is not automatically what a CNESST inspector expects in Quebec.