About TSSA

The Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) promotes and enforces public safety. It's our vision to be a valued authority for a safer Ontario.

For more information and detailed analysis on the state of safety compliance, please view TSSA's Annual Safety Performance Reports.

For more information about TSSA please explore the below:

Putting safety first

We deliver public safety services on behalf of the government of Ontario in four key sectors:

Boilers and Pressure Vessels and Operating Engineers
Elevating Devices, Amusement Devices and Ski Lifts
Fuels
Upholstered and Stuffed Articles

Established in 1997, we are a not-for-profit and self-funded organization. Our head office is in Toronto and we employ approximately 400 employees, 70% of whom work in operations. We are governed by a 13-member board of directors and accountable to the government of Ontario, the residents of Ontario and our other stakeholders. We fund our operations by charging industry customers a fee for the services that we provide.

Corporate values

TSSA's corporate values are:

Safety: Be safety conscious at all times.
Leadership: Be the best in actions and words.
Integrity: Be honest and ethical.
Respect: Build trust and earn respect.
Accountability: Be responsible for all actions and deliver on commitments.
Communication: Share information responsibly and effectively.
Collaboration: Work together across the whole organization and with our external partners.

TSSA stakeholders are encouraged to measure TSSA's employees' actions against these corporate values.

Code of Professionalism/Code of Conduct

In support of TSSA's Corporate Values, TSSA's Code of Professionalism applies to TSSA inspectors and investigators, which should be read in concert with TSSA's Code of Conduct for all personnel.

Please refer to the following links for these codes.

Code of Professionalism
Code of Conduct

Stakeholder Responsibility Statements

TSSA recognizes its accountability to its various stakeholders. As such, TSSA has developed the following responsibility statements:

To all stakeholders, our conduct will always be honest, professional and ethical.

To the public: To work with diligence and competence to protect the public interest by maintaining and enhancing safety. TSSA will lead the way in working to prevent avoidable incidents. We will educate the public so they may take personal responsibility for their safety.
To the government: To perform our delegated responsibilities with diligence, observing the principle of ensuring a fair, safe and informed marketplace that supports a competitive economy. We will recommend amendments to delegated legislation and regulations that will enhance public safety and advise the Minister promptly of any matters that may require action or attention.
To our customers: To provide timely and value-added services at a fair price. We will provide an objective and expert application of our delegated authority that promotes a level playing field and continuous improvement.

TSSA will consult with our stakeholders and work in partnership with them, to communicate our performance and earn their trust. Feedback on how we are meeting our commitments and responsibilities is welcome.

At TSSA, we are required to collect and maintain current customer data for the purposes of conducting our business and the furtherance of public safety. As an organization, we are committed to maintaining the accuracy, confidentiality and security of our customer's information.

TSSA will take every measure possible to balance the right of our customers to privacy of information with the need of the organization to collect, use or disclose information for legitimate business purposes. We will ensure compliance with all applicable provincial legislative requirements.

It is our commitment to our customers that the information we collect about them will only be used for the purposes for which it was intended. Customer information will not be used for any other purpose including the advancement of discretionary business or for recruitment.

For additional information about our policy related to customer information, please see TSSA's Access and Privacy Code for Regulatory Responsibilities by accessing it through the following link.

Safety value chain

While we are required to enforce the Technical Standards and Safety Act, 2000 and its regulations,we have a much broader role than compliance when it comes to the many incidents a resulting from operator or user behaviour - that of safety advocate.

The following activities within the safety value chain are preventative in nature:

Support government in developing regulations and code development and standard setting

Inform and educate end-users and industry participants of better safety practices and issues, new codes, regulations and requirements and seek to influence user behavior

Influence training institutions to correctly train, examine and certify trades people, register plants and equipment and license devices, sites and contractors

Review the design of new technology, new installations, changes to existing equipment and plants for compliance to codes and regulations

Inspect/audit trades people, contractors, plants, equipment and sites for compliance with codes and regulations and monitor developing safety related trends or issues

Take appropriate regulatory actions to resolve non-compliance situations or actions before or after safety incidents

Investigate safety incidents or near-misses

Value proposition

Our value proposition is to put the most emphasis on preventative activities within the safety value chain. The progress toward this goal will vary for each sector we regulate and we are committed to ensuring compliance through best practices. We design and implement preventions where we know there are more ways to enhance safety, such as public safety awareness campaigns. We know the role of our regulatory customers and other stakeholders to have a shared responsibility for safety and we encourage them to accept this responsibility.

Risk Informed Decision-Making (RIDM)

The best way to understand safety is in terms of risk. Even the International Standard Organization defines safety as a "freedom from risk."

How do we define risk?

The probability or frequency that a regulated technology, product, device or infrastructure could lead to harm of the public (noted as the Cause) combined with the severity of that harm (noted as the Effect).

Risk is about predicting the future and evidence, obtaining the right information and increasing the certainty of prediction. We gather data related to incidents and non-compliance, examine trends or patterns and then make risk-informed decisions to manage future public safety matters. We strive to prevent incidents through understanding of the occurrence and effectively controlling that risk.

We measure the impacts of risk-informed decision-making through the adoption of a unique safety metric, the Disability-Adjusted Life-Years (DALY). Developed by the World Health Organization, DALYs provide a scientifically rational way of combining injuries of different severities into a single unit of measure. A DALY of 1.0 is the loss of one year of healthy life of a single person due to an injury.

Healthy Years of Life Lost

We have incorporated a more simple description of DALY, known as "Healthy Years of Life Lost". While its meaning does not vary from the internationally known metric that we have adapted and referenced in past performance reports, it provides a clearer path to its intended meaning.

We report Health Years of Life Lost in three categories based on our ability to influence safety:

Non-compliance with regulatory requirements, which indicates the extent of impacts on health that result from someone who has responsibilities under the Act or regulations not complying with legal requirements

Potential inadequacy of the regulatory structure, which indicates the extent of impacts on health that result from a potential weakness in the regulations

Factors external to the regulatory structure, which indicates the extent of impacts on health that result from situations where the public using the technologies we regulate inadvertently put themselves at risk through their own behaviors.

Healthy Years of Life Lost provides a numerical representation of all injuries resulting over the reporting period, with consideration to three characteristics of each injury: severity, duration and frequency.

For a specific injury, the Healthy Years of Life Lost metric reflects the impact on the victim's quality of life, how long the effects last and whether the injury is permanent. We calculate the metric from information gathered through activities and other reliable sources.

The burden of injury may be two-fold:

Actual, based on observed health impacts
Predicted, based on near-miss occurrences that did not result in an injury

As part of our proactive approach to safety, we introduced predicted Healthy Years of Life Lost in 2012, noting the expected outcomes in a given year based on a combination of actual historical incidents, injuries, near misses and the specific actions planned to reduce that risk.

RIDM helps us make objective decisions on safety priorities in policy making (advising the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services) and policy administration (enforcing the regulations). This provides consistent interpretation of regulatory policies and expectations, ensuring transparency in decision-making, and passing the 'reasonableness' test. A scientific, evidence-based understanding of cause and effect and expert judgement, allows us to make objective assessments, even in the absence of available evidence. We are getting closer to becoming risk-informed in a predictive and proactive manner.

We can never eliminate risk but we can steadily and scientifically work to lessen and prevent incidents from occurring. That is our way to apply risk management principles and risk-informed decision-making.

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