Special to Ontario Construction News
Construction health and safety advocacy network the League of Champions held its annual general meeting on October 15 with outgoing board chair Stephen Agla reporting a year of membership growth, rising profile, and increasing focus on mental health initiatives.
“We have built meaningful momentum in ensuring every worker returns safely at the end of the day,” Agla told the meeting of contractors and service organizations that make up the LoC. The network has 128 members, an increase of 23 since October 2025.
Launched in 2016 through the Ontario General Contractors Association (OGCA) before expanding into an independent, cross-sector non-profit, the Toronto-based league promotes a culture of health and safety across the construction industry and other workplaces.
It has adopted the Champions Jersey as symbol of the movement, with health and safety professionals and executives wearing the signature hockey sweater as a public pledge to lead their organizations with compassion and accountability.
“Together we have the ability to influence change across our industry, to challenge the status quo, raise expectations,” Agla told the gathering of more than 100 people at the Eagles Nest Golf Club in Vaughan. “We have only begun to realize what this community can accomplish.”
Agla, who is also director of environment, health and safety at Toronto-based construction firm the Aecon Group, said the network this year increased speaking engagements, developed a safety culture survey released to members in the spring, and sponsored events focused on psychology and technology including a session in March at Conestoga College.
The league in 2023 partnered with the Mental Health Commission of Canada to provide its members with digital tools that help contractors evaluate, measure, and track workplace mental health and safety performance. The network has also partnered with LivingWorks, a global suicide prevention and intervention training organization, to address workplace stressors contributing to elevated rates of mental illness and suicides among tradespeople.
Those stressors in a male dominated, pull up your bootstraps culture include workplace hazards, pain from on-site injuries requiring medication, and loneliness due to work away from family.
In an address to the meeting, Beth Kelln, strategic development director at LivingWorks Canada, said construction employers must foster a “culture of caring” on job sites. She said mental health support can be integrated into existing injury-prevention systems, including incident-reporting protocols.
“We’re not talking about trying to invent yet another new program. Mental health and suicide prevention should be built into the fabric of how your business operates.”
Kelln noted that substance abuse and other psychological problems impact managers, co-workers, along with the bottom line. As such, she said everyone in a construction organization has the responsibility to “say something” if they see something so that struggling workers can get the help they need. She said the entire workforce should receive mental health awareness training.
Talking to a co-worker about their mental condition “is the most difficult conversation you can possibly have,” but Kelln called peer intervention a sign of loyalty and strength that can ease access to professional care.
Incoming LoC chair Jeff MacIntyre in an interview said the construction industry is recognizing that operational efficiency relies on a workforce that is mentally as well as physically fit, what he called the “psychology of safety.” He also said younger construction workers, in general, are more apt than older counterparts to reach out about mental health problems.
“There is a real change in behavior,” said MacIntyre, who is also president of southwestern Ontario ICI trade group the Grand Valley Construction Association. “There is certainly a better acceptance of the way things should be.”
Kevin Brown, CEO and founder of occupational health and safety consulting firm Cobalt Safety, who provided an overview of construction risks and hazards, said while worker safety is improving on job sites, greater focus on oversight could move the needle on injury statistics.
“We need as a profession to start to think a bit differently,” he said, urging construction supervisors to survey job sites not just for potential hazards but for risky processes and conduct as well.
“Risk is a choice between action and inaction,” said the former Ontario Ministry of Labour workplace accident investigator, noting that most construction accidents are preventable, often a result of inadequate training and supervision along with worker distraction.
“There are little cognitive failures, people are not paying attention.” Brown said workers and managers can succumb to a sort of mental complacency after getting away in the past with risky practices to meet productivity targets. “The brain learns to minimize the danger.”
Brown also suggested that more safety messaging should be in a visual format rather than written words given the profusion of languages on a job site. And he noted that the statutory text of Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act is in English and French, although related materials are multilingual. “I think workers have a right to know in languages they understand.”
In addition to presentations, approval of board appointments and membership updates the annual meeting saw four recipients receive two new awards, three for safety leadership and one for safety innovation.
The inaugural Craig Lesurf Construction Safety Leadership Award was presented to Clive Thurston, former president of the Ontario General Contractors Association; to David Frame, former executive director of the industry group and to Jason Ball, president of Kitchener-based Ball Construction.
The Craig Lesurf Construction Safety Ingenuity Award went to the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association, an Ontario health and safety resource, for its See Something, Say Something campaign. Deborah Moskal, IHSA’s director of stakeholder and client engagement, accepted the award after helping create the campaign.
Lesurf is the LoC’s secretary/treasurer, a past chair, and president of Toronto headquartered construction and infrastructure firm the Gillam Group.
New LoC members since the October 2025 AGM
Prodigy Construction
Stybek Roof +
3M Canada
Bass Installation
BGL Contractors Corp.
CGI
Cobalt Safety
Danico Safety
Dentec Safety Specialists
EBC Inc.
KASK
Limen Group
LivingWorks
