British Columbia is proposing an Australian-style psychosocial regulation

WorkSafeBC published a backgrounder in September 2026 proposing a new psychological health and safety regulation for British Columbia, along with a separate set of harassment and violence regulations. The consultation runs from 10 August to 9 October 2026. For an Australian reader the interesting part is the shape of it, because the proposed framework is built on the same steps PCBUs here already work from. The proposed psychological health and safety provisions set out five elements: psychological hazard identification, risk assessment plans, implementation of risk controls, consultation with workers, and ongoing education and training. That is the model WHS approach to any hazard, and it is close to what the NSW Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice and Victoria's OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations already require. One design choice is different. British Columbia's proposed definition of a psychosocial hazard covers four categories: traumatic circumstances and events, the design and management of work, the physical work environment, and equipment used at work. Interpersonal relationships are deliberately left out of that definition and dealt with under the separate harassment and violence regulations instead. Australia takes the opposite path, treating bullying, harassment and poor workplace relationships as psychosocial hazards inside the one framework. The numbers WorkSafeBC put behind the proposal are familiar. Psychological injury-only claims in British Columbia rose from 558 in 2016 to 2,613 in 2025, and the cost of those claims went from $32 million to $298 million. Claims for acts of violence and force rose from 2,134 to 3,827 over the same period, at a cost that grew from $48 million to $248 million. Those are the same curves Australian schemes have been reporting. For an organisation that already runs a psychosocial hazard register in Australia, the British Columbia proposal is a sign that the compliance shape is converging across jurisdictions. Hazard identification, a documented risk assessment, controls with named owners, a consultation record and training evidence are becoming the common denominator that satisfies more than one regulator. An operator that builds that evidence trail once, and keeps it current, is increasingly building something that travels. For anyone weighing up work in Canada or the UK, that is worth watching rather than acting on yet, but the direction is clear.