Alberta auditor to recheck work injuries figure

Alberta Auditor General Merwan Saher has admitted that the number of companies with above-average workplace injury rates in the province was overstatedin his spring report.

He is rechecking thenumbers based on new information from the province, he said.

The April 14 report states that 63 Alberta employers didn't comply with occupational health and safety orders for a period of a year or more. The rate of injury among these unnamed employers was three to four times the provincial average.

The statistic was the focus of most media storiesabout the spring report. Opposition parties demanded the province immediately release the names of the companies.

Alberta Employment and Immigration Minister Thomas Lukaszuk said he would make that information public once he determined no privacy laws would be broken. Now he's asked Saher's office to check the numbers, based on the new information from his department.

"I am of the belief that perhaps this list doesn't accurately reflect facts that perhaps there were some misinterpretations on the list," he told CBC News Thursday.

AG staff now reviewing number

"The minister is right. The 63 is overstated," Saher told CBC News.

The auditor general basedthe report on the numbers from a department audit. Saher's staff is now working with Employment and Immigration officials to review those figures.

"The number came from the department's records, but the department has now concluded that the number is overstated and it is working to determine an accurate number," Saher said.

Saher couldn't say when the review will be completed. If the number is determined to be too high, Saher said hewants to know why.

Despite the review, Saher said the public should not distrust the work performed by his office.

Saher was named the province's auditor general earlier this year after Fred Dunn stepped down in February.

Dunn's reportsduring his eight-year tenure as auditor general tended to be highlycritical of the government and Dunn had a reputation for making pointed comments about his findings.

Last October, Dunn called severance payouts to senior health executives "friendly parting gifts."

Auditor general not at fault:MacDonald

Alberta Liberal MLA Hugh MacDonald said a factual error committed by the province's auditor general proves that there are problems within the provincial government not the auditor general's office.

MacDonald said he continues to have confidence in Saher but has many more questions about the Employment and Immigration Ministry.

"The office of the auditor general and the current auditor general, they are auditors, they are not clairvoyants," MacDonald said.

"How are they to know that the information that's given to them by the department for their audit is not complete? The report makes it clear that the department is not able to enforce its own occupational health and safety law, and that still stands."

MacDonald said he is continuing to call on Lukaszuk to release the names of the companies that are the worst offenders when it comes to workplace health and safety violations.

For NDP Leader Brian Mason, Saher's decision to recheck thenumbers based on new information isn't a good enough step.

Mason applauded when Saher put the spotlight on injured workers when he released his report in mid-April.

"And now when he says the numbers are wrong and we have to go back and take another look at it, it really diminishes the credibility of the auditor general as well as the Ministry of Occupational Health and Safety," Mason said.