Currently, the OHS profession has no legal title protection or scope of practice protection. This means anyone can call themselves an OHS professional and claim to be competent in understanding, interpreting, and applying OHS law, programs, policies, procedures, and best practices. The Alberta Society of Health and Safety Professionals (ASHSP) was created to address this issue. The ASHSP membership consists of a group of health and safety professionals, practitioners, and other Albertans who are concerned with the current state of the OHS profession in Alberta. The ASHSP believes that competent, capable, and ethical health and safety professionals are imperative to ensuring and promoting the health and safety of workers. The sole purpose of the ASHSP is to protect the public interest by achieving the following: 1. Titles protected by law (only people who have demonstrated competency, capability, and are beholden to a code of conduct can use certain professional titles); 2. Scope of practice protected by law (only people who hold protected titles can perform and/or certify certain critical health and safety work); and 3. Establish a professional oversight body that will ensure the competency, capability, good practice, and ethical behavior of health and safety professionals in Alberta. Regulating the profession is required to assure the public that those who practice in this vital area are competent to do so. It is essential to the public interest, and for the integrity of our profession, to have OHS become a fully-recognized and protected profession under law, which will ultimate save lives of working Albertans.
