---
title: "Joint health and safety committee (JHSC)"
description: "What a joint health and safety committee is, when one is required, what it can actually do, and how differently the threshold is written across Canada."
term: "Joint health and safety committee"
definition: "A committee of worker and employer representatives, required in most workplaces above a headcount threshold, that inspects the workplace, reviews hazards and makes written recommendations the employer must answer in writing."
alsoKnownAs:
  - "JHSC"
  - "Health and safety committee"
  - "Comité de santé et de sécurité"
jurisdiction: "Canada"
locale: "en-CA"
publishedOn: 2026-09-06
reviewedOn: 2026-09-06
canonical: "https://safeally.net/en-ca/glossary/joint-health-and-safety-committee/"
sources:
  - 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: "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: "Health and safety programs — the basics"
    url: "https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/hsprograms/basic.html"
    publisher: "CCOHS"
---

# Joint health and safety committee (JHSC)

A committee of worker and employer representatives, required in most workplaces above a headcount threshold, that inspects the workplace, reviews hazards and makes written recommendations the employer must answer in writing.

The committee is the visible half of what Canadian OHS law calls the internal
responsibility system: hazards are supposed to be found and fixed by the people
at the workplace, and the committee is the standing forum where that happens with
both sides in the room.

## What it means in practice

- **At least half its members are workers**, and they are selected by the workers
  — not appointed by the employer. That is the structural point, and getting it
  wrong invalidates the committee however well it functions.
- **Recommendations get a written answer, on a deadline.** The mechanism only
  works because it produces a paper trail on both sides. It is also, in practice,
  some of the best evidence of due diligence an employer can hold.
- **It inspects**, on a schedule, and the inspection record is a document an
  inspector will ask for.
- **Certified members** have powers ordinary members do not, including in
  work-refusal and dangerous-circumstance procedures under several acts.

## What it is not

**It is not a decision-making body.** The committee recommends; the employer
decides and remains responsible. A committee treated as the place where safety
decisions are taken lets management off the hook it is actually on.

**It is not one rule across the country.** The federal Code requires a policy
committee above three hundred employees and a workplace committee above twenty;
Ontario requires a committee at twenty or more, and a health and safety
representative between six and nineteen; other provinces set their own numbers
and their own meeting frequencies. Quebec runs a different architecture again,
built around the _programme de prévention_ and the CNESST's participation
mechanisms. Sizing a committee from the wrong province is one of the more common
compliance errors in a multi-site organisation.