Workplace violence has become one of the defining occupational health and safety (OHS) issues of our time. For workers across the country, being punched, kicked, spat on, threatened or assaulted is now an ordinary part of going to work. 

This normalization is precisely what the Manitoba Federation of Labour (MFL) seeks to challenge in its new report, “Ending Manitoba’s Workplace Violence Epidemic.” 

Drawing together provincial Workers Compensation Board (WCB) injury statistics, interviews with workers from multiple sectors and existing OHS research, the report argues that workplace violence is both far more widespread than official statistics suggest and far more preventable than governments and employers have been willing to admit. Rather than treating violence as an unavoidable feature of health care, education, public transit or retail work, the report insists that it is an OHS hazard that employers have a legal responsibility to prevent, and that governments must regulate. 

As the report’s findings make clear, the scale of the problem is staggering. 

According to WCB data, accepted workplace injuries caused by violence more than tripled between 2015 and 2025, rising from 641 accepted claims to 2,187. Even more alarming, workplace violence injuries increased by 20 per cent in just the past two years, suggesting the trend is continuing rather than stabilizing. 

Though this growth is dramatic, it’s likely only an approximation of the issue. 

Injury statistics depend on claims accepted by the WCB (or the equivalent workers’ compensation agency in other provinces). But OHS research finds that these figures significantly underestimate the prevalence of workplace injuries and occupational deaths. 

The report warns that these data limitations also impact what we know about the full extent of workplace violence. Roughly 25 per cent of Manitoba workers, including teachers, are not covered by the provincial compensation system, despite mounting evidence that classrooms have become one of most common sites of occupational violence. 

Many other workers who are covered never file claims at all, either because injuries are normalized, employers suppress injury reporting, workers fear reprisal or incidents don’t result in any lost time away from work. 

Claim suppression is a particularly widespread problem. The report notes that many employers continue to discourage reporting because compensation claims affect the cost of WCB premiums and their public reputation, while workers who fear retaliation may conclude that reporting incidents will accomplish little. 

The official injury numbers — whether in Manitoba or elsewhere — consequently underestimate the true extent and cost of worker injuries. When it comes to workplace violence, therefore, the epidemic is almost certainly considerably larger than the official data indicate. 

To complement the statistics, labour studies instructor (and my colleague at the University of Manitoba) Karen Naylor conducted interviews with 38 workers employed in health care, education, emergency response, security, retail, transit, and social services. Their testimony gives life to the data and reveals the human impact of workplace violence. 

Workers describe constantly evaluating escape routes, anticipating assaults before entering rooms, worrying about weapons and accepting levels of danger that would have been considered unimaginable a generation ago. As workers’ narratives reveal, violence has become built into the organization of work itself rather than treated as an exceptional event.  

The report also identifies where the burden falls most heavily. 

Health care dominates nearly every measure. Indeed, according to the report’s figures, nearly 40 per cent of violent workplace injuries in Manitoba are experienced by health-care workers. Home support workers and housekeepers recorded the largest number of time-loss violence injuries in 2025, followed closely by nurse aides, orderlies, and patient service associates, while registered nurses also remain among the occupations experiencing the greatest numbers of violent incidents. Workers describe physical assaults, verbal abuse, biting, spitting, kicking and threats as routine occurrences. 

Chronic understaffing, often driven by inadequate public funding, compounds these risks. When workers are left alone with patients, response times slow, experienced staff cannot mentor newer workers and increasingly frustrated patients and families face longer waits, creating conditions where violence becomes more likely. 

Education emerged as another major sector of concern. Although teachers themselves fall outside WCB coverage, educational assistants rank among the occupations with the highest number of accepted violence claims. The report argues that the exclusion of teachers from compensation data obscures the true scale of violence in Manitoba’s school system. Educational assistants frequently bear the brunt of behavioural incidents while working with students who require additional supports, yet many schools lack sufficient staffing, specialized programming and training. 

Social service workers similarly face escalating dangers. Workers serving vulnerable populations increasingly confront threats linked to housing insecurity, addiction, untreated mental illness and deepening poverty. 

Emergency responders, including paramedics and firefighters, report regular assaults while attempting to provide care. Security personnel and correctional workers also experience persistently high rates of violence, reflecting broader pressures across public institutions. 

Public transit workers also face many of the same dynamics. Bus drivers regularly encounter aggressive passengers, intoxication, mental health crises and interpersonal conflict while operating transit vehicles alone. 

Retail workers likewise increasingly experience assaults connected to organized retail theft, shoplifting, drug use and economic desperation. 

Although these sectors differ considerably, the report identifies common structural causes, including: understaffing, inadequate training, insufficient security measures, poor workplace design and employers who too often regard violence as simply “part of the job.” 

It would be easy to conclude that the solution is simply harsher policing, tougher sentencing or expanding security powers. The report instead adopts a more nuanced position. It recognizes that properly trained security personnel can play an important role in specific high-risk workplaces, particularly hospitals and other settings where immediate intervention is sometimes necessary. Interviewees note improvements associated with institutional safety officers and controlled entry systems in certain facilities.

But the report is equally clear that security alone cannot solve workplace violence. Most violence grows from deeper organizational and social failures. Long wait times, impossible workloads, overcrowded facilities, inadequate staffing levels and deteriorating public services all increase tensions that eventually spill over onto frontline workers. Prevention therefore requires investing in public services rather than merely responding after violence occurs.

Across Canada, governments have often responded to visible social disorder by expanding coercive institutions while neglecting the conditions that produce insecurity in the first place. Workers deserve protection from violence, but that protection should not come at the cost of deepening punitive approaches toward poverty, homelessness, addiction or mental illness.

The report implicitly points toward a different framework, rooted in public investment rather than criminalization. Better staffing means shorter waits and less frustration. Expanded mental health and addictions services reduce crises before they reach emergency departments or transit systems. More supportive educational resources reduce pressures on classrooms. Stable housing reduces many of the confrontations experienced by frontline workers in health care, retail and public transit. Worker safety and social justice are not competing goals; in many cases, they are mutually reinforcing.

Toward that end, the report concludes with 10 recommendations designed to move Manitoba toward that preventative approach.

First, it calls for Safe Work Manitoba to develop a province-wide workplace violence prevention strategy, a striking omission given the dramatic rise in violence injuries. Second, it urges governments to fund safe staffing levels across health care, education, emergency response and other high-risk sectors, recognizing that understaffing consistently emerged as one of the strongest predictors of violence. It also recommends ensuring appropriately trained security personnel where risks are highest.

Equally important are the recommendations focused on enforcement. The report argues that Manitoba already has legal requirements governing violence prevention, hazard assessments, working alone, worker training and joint health and safety committees. The problem is that these obligations are too often ignored because enforcement has been inadequate. Strengthening inspections and ensuring employers comply with existing workplace safety laws could significantly reduce preventable injuries. Finally, the report calls for a formal provincial training standard so that violence prevention becomes a consistent OHS practice rather than an afterthought.

For decades, unions have argued that every workplace injury is preventable. Workplace violence should be treated no differently. The MFL’s report demonstrates that the current trajectory is neither inevitable nor acceptable. Violence is increasing because public services have been stretched, staffing has been cut, prevention has been neglected and employers have too often accepted dangerous working conditions as normal.

Now governments must respond with investments that address both the immediate hazards workers face and the broader social conditions that produce them. Workers in Manitoba, and across Canada, deserve workplaces that are safe, not because they are more heavily policed, but because they are adequately staffed, properly funded, effectively regulated, and supported by stronger public services.

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Summary

• The World Cup prompted Vancouver to clear its False Creek harbour of abandoned boats, a sudden absence that highlights their usual presence in the city’s harbours.
• Abandoned boats are a jurisdictional challenge and environmental hazard across B.C. coastal communities, but in Vancouver they intersect with the city’s housing affordability crisis, as some rely on them for shelter.
• Provincial funding to support the removal of abandoned boats recently ended, but a new federal bill would prohibit the transfer of boats to people who cannot maintain them, offering another way to mitigate the issue.

Stephen Paetkau’s salvage boat, Lucky Dog, was built for the North Sea. When he bought the Norwegian-made vessel in 2021, the advertisement featured three giant moustached Norsemen on the deck, arms crossed and chests puffed out. Today, however, it is moored off Granville Island in Vancouver, on standby to recover abandoned boats in False Creek. It sits beside a black pirate ship that can be rented out for parties, where people don pirate hats and sail out into English Bay to drink and spray water cannons. Both vessels are designed for waters a little bigger than a narrow inlet in the heart of the city.  

Paetkau named it Lucky Dog after the Chinese zodiac year of his birth and because, he says, he’s “the luckiest man alive.” Ironically, much of Paetkau’s work begins when someone else’s luck has run out. 

Paetkau and his brother Jonathan run Skookum Yacht Services. Since 2020 the company has become the one most often called by Transport Canada when an abandoned boat sinks, washes up or breaks to pieces in the waters around Vancouver —  something that happens often enough the locals are used to seeing a boat on the beach or a half-submerged mast in the harbour. Paetkau says that since they began working with Transport Canada in 2020 they have lifted or removed close to 100 boats from the waterways, seabed and beaches of False Creek and English Bay. 

This June, the Paetkaus found themselves busier than usual. Transport Canada established an exclusion zone in False Creek for the duration of the FIFA World Cup — for which Vancouver is one of 16 host cities — forcing several boats normally anchored there to be moved elsewhere. 

Typically, if an abandoned vessel in False Creek — the inlet separating downtown Vancouver from the southern expanse of the city — is deemed hazardous to the public, infrastructure, navigation routes or to the environment, then the Canadian Coast Guard will act swiftly and have it removed. If it is not a hazard but, as Paetkau calls it, merely “offensive junk,” the issue is passed to Transport Canada, who try to find the owner of the vessel. 

In a statement to The Narwhal, Transport Canada stated the exclusion zone was created to “support marine safety and security during FIFA events at the request of RCMP and VPD.” Boats that were anchored in the restricted area were relocated to nearby waters, including off of Kitsilano and Jericho beach, which Paetkau says are difficult places to anchor. 

Though the boats will eventually return to False Creek, their temporary relocation brings attention to an issue coastal community harbours across British Columbia have been facing for years: the risks abandoned boats pose to navigation, public safety and marine ecosystems. But as housing costs continue to rise in Vancouver, some abandoned boats are also becoming makeshift homes, complicating efforts to remove them. 

Abandoned boats have environmental and cultural impacts

When I arrive at his office on Granville Island, Paetkau is on the phone with the Jericho Sailing Centre. After he hangs up, I ask him what has happened to the boats that have been relocated. 

“Well,” he says, gesturing to his phone, “one of them is crashing into the Jericho breakwater.”

Five minutes later, Jonathan walks in with more news.

“Another is on Kits Beach.” 

They don’t sound an alarm bell or take off running to their boat, but instead sigh and shake their heads. A lot more steps and phone calls are required first, a reminder of one of the more persistent issues facing abandoned boats in False Creek: jurisdiction. 

In an emailed statement, Transport Canada told The Narwhal the time required to address a vessel varies, but “in almost all cases, there is a minimum 30-day public notice period” to allow someone to claim ownership. The Vancouver Police Department puts up a notice and assists in monitoring the boat during this time.

If the abandoned boat is not claimed within the time period, a company like Paetkau’s is called in, and the removal is completed on the taxpayer’s dime. The process of moving the boats is slow and the water does not wait. Changing tides, strong winds and storms often blow the boats onto rocks or smash them into thousands of fibreglass fragments before Paetkau’s crew can get to them. 

According to Transport Canada, abandoned vessels start to become environmental hazards as they deteriorate, as they begin to leak oils, fuels and other toxic substances while releasing debris such as fibreglass and microplastics into fragile marine ecosystems.

In certain areas of Canada, these effects have been significant enough to have reached Parliament. In October 2024, John White, director of lands and natural resources for the Snuneymuxw First Nation, appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans alongside Chief Lenora Joe of the shíshálh First Nation, a councillor from the Snaw-naw-as First Nation and an elected chief councillor of the Tseshaht First Nation. Together, they described the environmental and cultural impacts abandoned vessels are having on Indigenous coastal communities. 

Chief Joe told Parliament how abandoned vessels contaminate marine food sources that are central to life for the shíshálh Nation. “Our food is part of our culture,” she said. “The way we collect food, the way we gather it, the way we celebrate — everything that we do depends on the food that we can gather.” 

White pointed to impacts on Pacific salmon in Snuneymuxw territory, describing what he said was a historic decline in salmon on the Fraser River. According to White, sockeye runs that once numbered tens of millions dropped to approximately 500,000 in 2024. 

Two years later, White says the problem persists for the Snuneymuxw Nation, where abandoned boats continue to impact their clam beds and shellfish. “Until we change regulations or change acts and we change regulations on a higher level, we’re still going to fight this problem,” he says.

White also acknowledges opportunities for Indigenous communities to be part of the solution: “How can the First Nations be included in this and develop business around breaking down ships and being part of that process?”

Abandoned boats a symptom of the housing crisis in Vancouver

In False Creek, environmental damage is only part of what Paetkau encounters. When storms drive abandoned boats onto rocks, Paetkau says what he and his crew find inside looks like “desperation.” 

One call in particular has stayed with Paetkau. He boarded a boat that had crashed onto rocks in False Creek, with a hole ripped in the side. His job was to assess the damage and determine a responsible bid for its removal. But, when he climbed inside, he found a woman. 

It was February, and the boat was sitting in an area that would soon fill with seawater when the tide came in. She was wrapped in three flotation jackets and was insisting she could repair the boat that Paetkau knew was beyond saving. She told him she had nowhere else to go. What looked like a wreck had become to her a “paradise,” Paetkau says, even as the boat broke apart around her. 

Housing in Vancouver is among the most expensive in Canada. In a city where the average one-bedroom or studio apartment can cost thousands of dollars a month, even a broken-down boat begins to look like a viable alternative. 

To see how these boats become a symptom of the housing crisis, it helps to first understand how they often become abandoned. 

In B.C., cars must be registered and insured. But according to Paetkau, boats are typically bought and sold privately, often without any formal record of transfer. When a boat reaches the end of its life, both disposal and repairs can cost thousands. At that point, there is a clear incentive to pass it along. 

“I’ve known of boats that we charged the Canadian taxpayer seven or eight thousand dollars to get rid of,” he says, “that probably changed hands over nothing more than a handshake and a six-pack.”

Because of this, Paetkau says, there is little to no paper trail, ownership becomes unclear and the boats tend to drift between hands.

While they can provide shelter, many of the boats stay broken-down in the hands of people who don’t know how to operate or maintain them. As a result, these boats can become harmful for the people on board and for the environment.

Provincial funding ends, but other solutions emerging for abandoned boats

Between April 2025 and May 2026, Transport Canada removed 19 vessels in False Creek. But while Vancouver’s housing crisis may intensify the problem, abandoned boats are not confined to the city’s shoreline. “What I hear from Transport Canada is there are other harbours [in B.C.] where the problem of abandoned boats is worse,” Paetkau says. 

On the west coast of Vancouver Island, in towns such as Tofino and Ucluelet, and the First Nations communities Opitsaht, Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht, the problem is familiar. Until recently, the removal of abandoned boats in their harbours was funded through the provincial Clean Coast, Clean Waters Initiative.

That funding ended this year, as planned, raising concerns in communities where a lack of infrastructure, such as boat lifts, can make vessel removals particularly costly. In an emailed statement, the B.C. Ministry of Environment and Parks told The Narwhal that at this time “there is no funding identified beyond this.” 

There are still signs of efforts to address the problem before the boats become wrecks. Bill C-244, also known as the Clean Coasts Act, was introduced in 2025 and would prohibit owners from transferring vessels to people they know (or ought to know) cannot safely maintain or dispose of them. The bill has passed second reading and is currently under committee review. 

Down the coast, Washington State has taken a similar preventative approach with its Vessel Turn-In Program that allows owners to surrender boats free of charge that are likely to become abandoned before they reach that point, reducing both environmental damage and cleanup costs. 

In Vancouver, preparations for the World Cup pushed many of the boats elsewhere, but it is unclear what changes will outlast the tournament. The version of False Creek projected to the world looked a little different than what locals were used to seeing, and yet the issues beneath the surface remain the same. 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.