--- title: "Hazard assessment template: what each Canadian jurisdiction actually requires in writing" description: "A blank hazard assessment and control record, plus the part nobody tells you: Canada has no single mandatory risk assessment document, and five jurisdictions require five different things." lede: "Searching for a Canadian risk assessment template turns up American forms, European ones, and consultants' PDFs. The reason is that the thing you are looking for does not exist as one document: what has to be written down depends on whether you are federally regulated and, if not, on which province you are in. Here is a record that starts by settling that — and what each jurisdiction really demands, section by section, with the text to check." jurisdiction: "Canada" locale: "en-CA" publishedOn: 2026-09-08 reviewedOn: 2026-09-08 canonical: "https://safeally.net/en-ca/templates/hazard-assessment-template/" files: - label: "Hazard assessment and control record" url: "https://safeally.net/downloads/hazard-assessment-record/en-ca/hazard-assessment-and-control-record.docx" format: "docx" note: "Editable document, ten sections, Letter paper. It opens on a reference table of what each Canadian jurisdiction requires in writing — keep that page. Every section says whether it is required by law, recommended, or industry practice." sources: - label: "COHSR, s. 19.1 — hazard prevention program" url: "https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-86-304/section-19.1.html" publisher: "Justice Laws Website" - label: "COHSR, s. 19.3 — hazard identification and assessment methodology" url: "https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-86-304/section-19.3.html" publisher: "Justice Laws Website" - label: "COHSR, s. 19.8 — program evaluation reports, kept for six years" url: "https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-86-304/section-19.8.html" publisher: "Justice Laws Website" - label: "Alberta OHS Code, Part 2 — hazard assessment, elimination and control" url: "https://search-ohs-laws.alberta.ca/legislation/occupational-health-and-safety-code/part-2-hazard-assessment-elimination-and-control/" publisher: "Alberta OHS legislation search" - label: "Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act — ss. 25 and 32.0.3" url: "https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90o01" publisher: "Ontario e-Laws" - label: "BC Occupational Health and Safety Regulation, Part 3 — ss. 3.1 to 3.3" url: "https://www.worksafebc.com/en/law-policy/occupational-health-safety/searchable-ohs-regulation/ohs-regulation/part-03-rights-and-responsibilities" publisher: "WorkSafeBC" - label: "CNESST — programme de prévention pour un établissement" url: "https://www.cnesst.gouv.qc.ca/fr/prevention-securite/organiser-prevention/mesures-specifiques-etablissements/appliquer-mecanismes-prevention-participation/mecanismes-prevention/faire-programme-prevention/programme-prevention-etablissement" publisher: "CNESST" - label: "CNESST — plan d'action en établissement" url: "https://www.cnesst.gouv.qc.ca/fr/prevention-securite/organiser-prevention/mesures-specifiques-etablissements/appliquer-mecanismes-prevention-participation/mecanismes-prevention/faire-plan-action/plan-action" publisher: "CNESST" --- # Hazard assessment template: what each Canadian jurisdiction actually requires in writing Searching for a Canadian risk assessment template turns up American forms, European ones, and consultants' PDFs. The reason is that the thing you are looking for does not exist as one document: what has to be written down depends on whether you are federally regulated and, if not, on which province you are in. Here is a record that starts by settling that — and what each jurisdiction really demands, section by section, with the text to check. There is no Canadian equivalent of the European single risk-assessment document, and that is the first thing worth knowing. Europe has one because a 1989 directive obliged every member state to create one; Canada took a different route, and the result is that **what you must write down depends on which of fourteen jurisdictions you are in.** So the honest template does not start with a hazard table. It starts with a question: federally regulated, or provincial — and if provincial, which province. Get that wrong and you either produce a document nobody asked you for, or you skip the one they did. ## The first fork: federal or provincial Roughly six per cent of the Canadian workforce is federally regulated — banking, telecommunications, interprovincial and international transport, federal Crown corporations, and work in the territories under federal jurisdiction. If that is you, the _Canada Labour Code_ Part II and the **Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations** apply, and the provincial OHS act does not. Everyone else is under provincial law. There are ten provinces and three territories, and their duties genuinely differ. This article covers the four that carry the most workers — Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia — and it says where they part company, because a template that describes one of them is wrong for the other three. ## Federally regulated: a program, and a record of the hazards COHSR Part XIX is titled "Hazard Prevention Program", and section 19.1 requires the employer to develop, implement and monitor one: > in consultation with and with the participation of the policy committee, or, if there is no policy committee, the work place committee or the health and safety representative That clause is not decoration. The program is not something you can write alone and circulate afterwards; the committee's participation is part of the requirement, and its absence is a defect in the program itself. Six components are named: an implementation plan, a hazard identification and assessment methodology, the hazard identification and assessment, preventive measures, employee training, and a program evaluation. **Notice what section 19.1 does not say: "in writing".** But read section 19.3, which governs the methodology, and the written duty arrives by the back door. The methodology must set out: > (a) the steps and time frame for identifying and assessing the hazards; (b) the keeping of a record of the hazards; and (c) a time frame for reviewing and, if necessary, revising the methodology. A _record of the hazards_ is a document, whatever you call it. And 19.3(1) lists what the methodology has to take into account when you build it — hazardous occurrence investigation reports, first aid and minor injury records, workplace health protection programs, inspection results, employee reports, government and employer studies and tests, committee reports, hazardous substances records, and any other relevant ergonomics-related information. Ergonomics-related hazards are named explicitly in Part XIX, which is worth pausing on: they are not an optional extra you get to because they are harder to score than an unguarded machine. One retention rule you will not find elsewhere: under section 19.8, if a program evaluation has been conducted, the employer prepares a report and **keeps it readily available for six years** after its date. ## Alberta: the closest thing Canada has to a written hazard assessment If you work in Alberta, this is the province where the duty most resembles what a European reader expects, and the wording is worth having in front of you. OHS Code section 7: > **7(1)** An employer must assess a work site and identify existing and potential hazards before work begins at the work site or prior to the construction of a new work site. > > **7(2)** An employer must prepare a report of the results of a hazard assessment and the methods used to control or eliminate the hazards identified. > > **7(3)** An employer must ensure that the date on which the hazard assessment is prepared or revised is recorded on it. Three things follow from those sixty words. First, **the report covers two things, not one**: the results _and_ the methods used to control or eliminate what was found. A hazard list with no controls beside it is half a report. Second, **it has to be dated on its face.** That sounds like clerical fussiness until you need to show which version was in force on the day something happened — which is the whole question a due-diligence defence turns on. Third, section 7(4) sets out when it must be repeated, and this is the most useful list in the country whichever jurisdiction you are actually in: > (a) at reasonably practicable intervals to prevent the development of unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, (b) when a new work process is introduced, (c) when a work process or operation changes, or (d) before the construction of significant additions or alterations to a work site. Note that none of the four is a calendar. "At reasonably practicable intervals" puts the burden on you to justify the interval you chose — which is more demanding than an annual deadline, not less, because you cannot satisfy it by doing it in December. Section 8(1) then requires the employer to **involve affected workers** in the assessment and in the control or elimination of what it found. Not inform. Involve. ## Ontario: a written policy is not a written assessment Ontario is where most of the confusion in this area comes from, because the OHSA does impose a written duty — just not the one people assume. Section 25(2)(j): > prepare and review at least annually a written occupational health and safety policy and develop and maintain a program to implement that policy And 25(2)(k) requires that policy to be posted in a conspicuous place at the workplace, or in a readily accessible electronic format. Section 25(4) exempts workplaces where **five or fewer workers are regularly employed** from the policy requirement. So: a written policy, reviewed annually, plus a program. **There is no general duty in the OHSA to produce a written hazard assessment.** If you doubt that, the Act says so itself, by conditional. Section 32.0.3 requires an employer to assess the risks of workplace violence, and then section 32.0.3(3) says the employer shall: > advise the committee or a health and safety representative, if any, of the results of the assessment, and **provide a copy if the assessment is in writing** A statute that has to say "if the assessment is in writing" is a statute that does not require the assessment to be in writing. The same shape appears in section 25(2)(l), which requires the results of any health and safety report in the employer's possession to go to the committee, and a copy of the written portions _if the report is in writing_. Which leads to the practical point, and it is not a loophole: **in Ontario, writing the assessment down is optional and doing it badly is not.** The general duty in section 25(2)(h) — take every precaution reasonable in the circumstances for the protection of a worker — is what you will be measured against, and an undocumented assessment is very hard to evidence after the fact. The reason to fill in a record in Ontario is not compliance with a form requirement. It is that the record is the only thing that will still exist in two years. ## British Columbia: the threshold is the program, not the assessment BC frames it as a program too, with thresholds that decide how formal it has to be. Under the OHS Regulation section 3.1, a formal occupational health and safety program as set out in section 3.3 is required of: - employers with **20 or more workers** and at least one workplace determined to create a moderate or high risk of injury; and - employers with **50 or more workers**, whatever the risk rating. Below that, section 3.2 requires a **less formal program**, built on regular monthly meetings with workers where health and safety is discussed, and **records kept of what was discussed**. Small does not mean exempt; it means lighter and still written. Section 3.3 sets out what the formal program must contain: a statement of the employer's aims and the responsibilities of everyone involved, provision for regular inspection of premises and equipment, appropriate written instructions, periodic management meetings reviewing health and safety activities, prompt investigation of incidents, maintenance of records and statistics, and instruction and supervision of workers in safe work practices. "Appropriate written instructions" and "maintenance of records" are where a hazard assessment record lives in BC. It is not named as such, and it is expected. ## Quebec: this changed on 1 October 2025, and the clock is running Quebec's mechanism is the one most likely to be out of date in whatever template you found elsewhere, because the regime was rewritten by the _Loi modernisant le régime de santé et de sécurité du travail_ and the **Règlement sur les mécanismes de prévention et de participation en établissement came into force on 1 October 2025.** Quebec's instruments have French names, and they should keep them even inside an English document: - **Un programme de prévention** — required of establishments grouping **20 travailleurs ou plus**, of establishments of 19 or fewer covered by the multi-establishment approach, of employers who are members of a _mutuelle de prévention_, and of any establishment where the CNESST requires one. It is developed, applied and **updated annually**. - **Un plan d'action** — for establishments of **19 travailleurs ou moins**. Also applied and updated annually. Three details matter for anyone reading this in 2026: 1. **You have one year** to develop and apply the programme or the plan d'action, counting from the moment the obligation arises — 1 October 2025 for most, or the creation of the establishment. An employer who already had to apply a programme de prévention continues without delay. 2. **Transmission is part of the duty.** The programme and every update go to the _comité de santé et de sécurité_ where one exists. And **every three years** from the date it was put into application, the employer transmits to the CNESST its priority actions, the progress of the planned prevention measures and the follow-up of measures already in place. The CNESST has said the form for this is not yet available — which is a reason to keep the underlying record in shape, not a reason to wait. 3. **The agent de liaison en santé et en sécurité can make written recommendations**, notably on hazard identification, and the employer has **30 days** to answer them. That is a deadline attached to your hazard record that has no equivalent in the other jurisdictions covered here. One more Quebec quirk worth recording in the file: if the headcount in an establishment drops to 19 or fewer during the year, the programme de prévention is maintained until 31 December of the following year. You do not downgrade the moment somebody leaves. ## The hierarchy of controls, and why it belongs in the record Every jurisdiction expects controls in a particular order, and Alberta puts it in law more plainly than anywhere else. Section 9 of the OHS Code: eliminate the hazard if reasonably practicable; if not, eliminate or control it **through engineering controls**; if that is not enough, use **administrative controls** that bring it as low as reasonably achievable; and if the hazard still cannot be controlled, ensure appropriate **personal protective equipment** is used. A combination is permitted only where no single measure will do. The reason this belongs in the written record rather than in a training slide is that **the order is auditable on the page.** An assessment whose control column reads "gloves, safety glasses, training" for every line has not applied the hierarchy — it has skipped to the bottom of it, and that is visible to anyone reading the form without needing to visit the site. ## What this record is not - **It is not a DUERP, and it will not satisfy one.** France, Germany, Spain and Italy each impose their own single document with its own required contents; filling in a Canadian form for a French site produces a document with no legal basis, presented to an authority that is not expecting it. - **It is not the hazard-specific assessments.** Confined space entry, hazardous substances and WHMIS, workplace violence, fall protection, working alone, asbestos, noise: each has its own requirements, its own triggers and often its own prescribed form. This record is the layer underneath them, not a replacement for any of them. - **It is not a substitute for the committee.** In three of the five jurisdictions described here, the participation of workers or of the committee is written into the duty. A record produced without them is defective even if every box is filled. - **It is not legal advice**, and it is not a full statement of any of these duties. Each source is linked below, and they are short enough to read. ## How to use it 1. **Settle section 1 first.** Federal or provincial; which province; which instrument this record forms part of. Then delete the rows that do not apply — after reading them. 2. **Write your method down** (section 3), including your severity and likelihood scales in words. Federally, this is itself a requirement. 3. **Break the site into areas or activities** (section 4) that group people facing the same hazards under the same conditions. 4. **Go and look.** One area per walk, with somebody who does the work. Nothing on this page substitutes for that, and it is the only step an inspector cannot verify from paper alone. 5. **Fill in the hazard table** (section 5), and write the control in the same sitting as the hazard. The decision made in front of the task is better than the one made three weeks later in front of a spreadsheet. 6. **Check the order of controls** (section 6). If the engineering column is empty across the board, go back. 7. **Record the participation** (section 7) with names. It is a legal element in most of Canada, not a courtesy. 8. **Open the version table** (section 8) with this version and its trigger, and set the interval you can defend. Then diarise the review. The first hazard assessment is almost always done properly; it is the second one that goes missing.