The Workers Compensation Board of Saskatchewan has released some of there injury and fatality numbers for the year 2018. While the ten-year average has seen a steady decline in the number of workplace incidents, 2018 saw a reverse of the trend with higher injury rates and a 78% increase in workplace fatalities. Kevin Mooney with the WCB shares some of the reasons for the increase.

"In a typical year in Saskatchewan, we have approximately 35 workplace fatalities, last year in 2018 we had 48 workplace fatalities, in the previous year in 2017 we had 27 so that would be the spike in the percentages but in any given year it's about 35 fatalities."

Seeing numbers that high can be a little shocking but according to Mooney almost half of the workplace fatalities in a year are attributed to workplace diseases rather than traumatic accidents.

"Well, every year approx half the fatalities would be occupational disease and really there are two leading factors there, asbestos exposure and firefighter cancers seems to be the top two occupational diseases."

"The other half would be traumatic type fatalities, there were a large number of motor vehicle crashes that are work related, and then falls from heights as well would be two of the areas we're focusing on." 

Along with the increase in fatalities, the WCB also reported a slight increase in injury rates over last year.

"after about 10 years of consistent decreases in our total injury rate and our time loss injury rate, in 2018 we did see a small increase of both of those, so we accepted around 23,000 claims in 2018 so that was up a bit."

"I think we are seeing a plateau in our injury rates and so it's causing us to really reflect and think of new ways we can reduce injury rates in the province."

While there has been an increase in injury rates last year those numbers are the exception, not the norm.

"Over the last 10 years, we saw about a 45% reduction in the total injury rates, if you go back to 2008 we were accepting around 40,000 claims so last year there were around 23,000 so we have made a lot of improvements in this province."

"With the small increase this year i wouldn't say its cause for alarm but at the same time we are seeing a bit of a plateau so we are reaching out to other partner jurisdictions trying to learn more about the new trends for prevention techniques and were starting to adopt some new approaches as well."