About

Nova SAFE is a central location for key safety resources and information to assist Nova Scotia workplaces, employees, and industry, in understanding and complying with legislative requirements under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the Technical Safety Act.

You should always refer to the official Nova Scotia legislation and regulations as needed for the full requirements.

Nova SAFE provides information on topics in condensed format available anywhere from your phone, computer or any mobile device.

The Safety Branch would like to thank Construction Safety Nova Scotia for their collaboration and sharing of content contained within Nova SAFE.

The Safety Branch with the Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills & Immigration concentrates efforts on safe and healthy workplaces, safe work practices, and safety standards protecting the public.

The Occupational Health & Safety (OHS), and Technical Safety (TS) Divisions of the Safety Branch work closely with government partners, sector councils and businesses to strive to make Nova Scotia the safest place to work in Canada.

Role of the Technical Safety Division

Technical Safety works with its partners and clients to achieve compliance with legislation, regulations, and standards for fuel, boilers and pressure equipment, power engineering, amusement devices, elevating devices, crane operations, and electrical safety. Regulatory compliance is achieved by engaging with clients to set the requirements, promoting education and awareness of the requirements and how to comply, verifying that compliance is being achieved through inspections and enforcing compliance when required.

Role of the OHS Division

In the OHS Division, we strive to improve understanding of Occupational Health and Safety(OHS) requirements through education and support the Internal Responsibility System. We also administer and when necessary, enforce OHS legislation throughout all provincially regulated industry sectors.

We want to ensure that assistance to any person in relation to health and safety at a workplace is provided and that we strive to improve Occupational Health and Safety conditions through research, inspection, investigation, and enforcement.

Here are the building blocks of the Occupational Health and Safety and Technical Safety Divisions:

Pathways to Compliance

There are many pathways to achieving compliance with the province's regulations and safety standards. We work with our partners to set the requirements, then achieve compliance through promotion, verification, and enforcement.

Here are the steps in our Compliance and Enforcement process:

Setting Requirements - we are committed to engaging with the public to consider what impacts new rules will have on Nova Scotians.
Promoting Compliance - ensuring everyone is involved and understands our legislation, codes, and standards.
Verifying Compliance - we monitor and inspect to ensure everyone is following the safety rules. We inspect equipment, workplaces, and public spaces, as well as risk-level, safety maturity and compliance by sector/industry.
Enforcement Requirements - we encourage voluntary compliance, however, when that is not enough, we have enforcement tools to regulate the safety of people and equipment to ensure all standards are met.

Disclaimer

The content of this web application is for general information only. Information should not be regarded or relied upon as a definitive guide to safety practices and procedures. No representations of any kind are made with regard to accuracy, completeness or sufficiency of the contents.

You should not act on the information contained within the web application without reviewing the official regulations and legislations, or without seeking specific independent legal advice on your specific circumstance.

Where there are differences between the web application and the official version of the regulations and legislation, the official version of the regulations and legislation is correct. You can send any noted differences to SafetyBranch@novascotia.ca.

Always remember that the decision on whether or not your workplace is in compliance with legislative requirements is made solely at the discretion of a Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration OHS officer. [October 2, 2025]

Privacy Notice

If you provide your contact information on this web application in order to subscribe to receive our periodic communications such as newsletters, hazard alerts, industry alerts, and any other Safety Branch safety related communications, your contact information will be collected, used, and disclosed for the purpose of making all safety communications available to you in accordance with the authority granted by the NS FOIPOP Act for as long as you remain on our contact list. We may only use or disclose your information for another purpose if we are authorized by law/regulations to do so.

By submitting your contact information for the Nova Scotia Safety Branch's contact list, you acknowledge that the information provided to us is correct and accurate, and you understand that any information you provide to us via this page or any of our official channels will be collected, used, and disclosed for the purpose of handling your request, managing, disseminating information to individuals on the contact list, and removing you from the list upon request.

Because one of our partners (Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety-CCOHS) designed and maintains our web application, they have a different privacy policy than us as part of their terms and conditions, and you need to read the CCOHS privacy notice before proceeding to understand how they handle personal information.

If you click on a link on our page that takes you to another website, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram etc., those websites have their own privacy policies, and we have no control over how they use any personal information you share with them.

To read more about how Government of Nova Scotia respects your privacy when interacting with us review our full privacy statement. If you have any questions about how the Department of Labour, Skills, and Immigration handles your information, or if you want to request access to or correct your information, you may contact us at 902-424-5400, 1-800-9LABOUR (Toll-free) or SafetyBranch@novascotia.ca.