In order to infuse healthy environment in workplaces, a new provincial legislation was put forth in the parliament. This proposed bill would give workers a much needed power, said Margaret MacDiarmid, Minister of labour, citizens' services.

This would allow employees to claim compensation if they have been bullied, mentally tortured or have been assaulted. There have been endless cases where workers lose their mental balance due to the unhealthy working conditions

Mental illness is one such thing, which is not easy to overcome, said MacDiarmid, who further affirmed that there are lot of similarities between existing compensation rights and this one.

While drafting this bill, they thought about one thing that if worker gets physically assaulted again and again, then he has right to claim the compensation for ‘n’ number of times, then why not this clause should be introduced in this proposal. This would also cover any incident in relation to sexual harassment.

So if a person has got mental shock due to an incident then he would be liable to ask for the workers compensation. So coverage has been extended to those also, who suffer "an acute reaction to a sudden traumatic event" at work.

It would also benefit spouse, as if partner gets lifetime shock and is not able to resume back, then as per the policy, he would be given allowances as per inflation.

MacDiarmid said such kind of incidents increasingly happens with firefighters or police officers. The cover of the bill is too wide, said she and would cost the government between $10 million and $18 million per year

Some of the points that were being highlighted by expert team as mentioned by MacDiarmid, “There's no question it increases costs, but one of the things that's very quickly pointed out by experts in mental illness is that there is a huge hidden cost to not addressing mental illness”.