Posted By Dave Merchant
Legislation is in places very similar and in others wildly different (both to the UK and the USA), as Canada tends to take its own stance on most topics. Also, H+S laws are geographically varied (what you can do in Vancouver is different to what you can do in Toronto...), which makes the process of running anything at a national level nightmarish. You have national stuff (from CCOHS), then federal stuff from the Labor Code et al, then territory-specific stuff, a lot of which is variable because of who was around at the time the meeting was held (for example territories with heavy industry or oil adopt policies you'd recognize from those industries elsewhere in the world, but if a territory only has moose and trees, you get.. yeah...)

take a look at:-

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/e...place_health/index.shtml

and

http://www.ccohs.ca/

and

http://www.canoshweb.org/en/


There's an obscure attempt to meld Canadian and EU OSH, details of which are at http://www.eu-ccohs.org but as with all EU online projects it's half-broken and mostly copies of stuff from other people (i.e. the links above).

Posted By Dave Merchant
It is nightmarish, but then so is the EU system if you're not used to it. Canada is stranger than the US, but no more difficult to learn than the stuff you already know - if you can understand the complexities of ACOPs and the HSE, you can crack anything.

Academic qualifications will translate anywhere, but of course if your experience and knowledge is with UK/EU stuff you'll be starting again with the Canadian regs. The concepts and principles are the same (the Swiss Cheese model is the same over there, even though Canadian cheese is possibly a health hazard) but it'll take a while to get used to the different agencies and laws, so you're "a work in progress".

Can't comment on the availability of jobs, but people tend to say the quality of life per-unit-wage is far better than the UK provided you pick your spot (the back end of Toronto is as bad as the back end of Birmingham or Chicago, just with more guns per head). Someone will float past this thread sooner or later that's made the switch and can advise better.