How to Start in Canada

How to Start Submitting Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Reports Through LEAF in Canada

Submit the Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR, LAB1009) through LEAF in Canada: confirm federal jurisdiction, gather the previous calendar year's counts and hours for every workplace, sign in with GCKey or your bank, and file by March 1, even with zero incidents.

Written November 3, 2026 · Edited November 7, 2026 · 22 min read

Applies in: CA

This guide covers one filing only: the Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR), form LAB1009 for most employers, completed and submitted online through LEAF, the Labour Electronic Access Form. It is an annual, organization-level filing. It is not the report for a single incident. Saying the difference plainly matters, because the two filings share words and a department and almost nothing else: a different report, a different portal, and different deadline logic. The investigation report (HOIR, LAB1070) covers one hazardous occurrence, goes through the Data Gateway, and runs on a 24-hour telephone clock and a 14-day written clock from the occurrence. The annual report totals a whole calendar year, goes through LEAF under the wording on the LEAF page, and runs on a single March 1 deadline for the year just ended. Section 6 sets the two side by side. If you arrived here after an incident, read the sibling guide linked under Related guides first and come back to this one for the March 1 filing.

LEAF itself is narrow. Labour Electronic Access Form describes LEAF as a secure portal that allows businesses to complete and submit forms online to the Labour Program instead of using paper forms, and states that each year federally regulated businesses must submit their Annual Health and Safety Reports to the Labour Program and should sign in or register to LEAF to complete and submit the EAHOR online. No official page describes the screens inside LEAF past sign-in and registration: no page states the in-portal form fields, any confirmation or receipt step, or whether LEAF pre-fills anything. This guide therefore gives the verified procedure up to the portal door — jurisdiction, the year's numbers, the sign-in and registration routes, and the fallback submission routes — and states plainly, at each portal step, what to check on screen instead of inventing a click path. Do not carry over steps from the Data Gateway, GCOS, or any other federal portal.

1. Check first: does federal jurisdiction cover the organization?

The EAHOR is for employers subject to federal jurisdiction and regulated by the Canada Labour Code. Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Who must submit states that each year by March 1, those employers must submit their annual health and safety reports to the Labour Program, accounting for January 1 to December 31 of the previous calendar year. Most employers in Canada fall under provincial or territorial law instead, and this filing is not theirs. Check the list at List of federally regulated industries and workplaces: air transportation, banks, grain elevators and related plants, certain First Nations band council and Indigenous self-government activities, most federal Crown corporations, port services and cross-border pipelines, postal and courier services, radio and television broadcasting, cross-border railways, cross-border road transportation, telecommunications, uranium mining and atomic energy, and any business vital, essential, or integral to one of those activities, plus the federal public service and Parliament for Parts II and IV of the Code. If the organization is not on that list, stop here and check the provincial route instead. If jurisdiction is genuinely unclear, email the Labour Program at esdc.lab.eahor-raescr.tra.edsc@labour-travail.gc.ca or call 1-800-641-4049 before assembling numbers for a filing that may not apply.

Three filing rules follow from the same page and decide who signs what. First, headquarters files: submissions from individual workplaces of an organization are not accepted, and all federally regulated workplaces must be listed on one report submitted by the organization's headquarters, according to Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Additional information and resources. Second, separate legal entities file separately: an EAHOR (and a harassment and violence report) is required for each organization. Third, ownership changes split the year: on a transfer of ownership, the seller reports the period before the sale and states the transfer date and the new owner's legal name, and the new owner reports from the transfer on; on a merger, the same split applies with the merged organization's name stated. If the organization ceased operations during the reporting year, it still reports for the period it was in operation. The owner-operator exception is set out in the FAQ above: no staff in an employer-employee relationship in the previous year means no EAHOR, while staff at any point in the year means the report is required.

2. Know what the report counts: one year, every workplace, totals only

The EAHOR records totals, not incident narratives. Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: How to complete states that the EAHOR must include the information relating to hazardous occurrences and employment information set out in Schedule II (subsection 15.10(2)) under the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations for the previous calendar year. For each workplace identified by the organization, fill in these fields:

  • Number of disabling injuries
  • Number of deaths
  • Number of minor injuries
  • Number of other hazardous occurrences
  • Total hours worked by all employees for the full year (Regular report; the Onboard report carries total hours worked by all onboard employees instead)
  • Average weekly hours worked by one full-time employee
  • In operation (Y/N), and date ceased if applicable
  • Comments, where clarification or a correction is needed

The definitions decide what goes in each count, and guessing from everyday language will misstate them. Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Additional information and resources defines a disabling injury as an employment injury or occupational disease that prevents an employee from reporting to work or effectively performing all regular duties on any day after the day it occurred, results in the loss of a body member or its complete loss of usefulness, or results in permanent impairment of a body function. A death covers an employee death in the workplace, while engaged in work activities, or resulting from a workplace injury, even if it appears to be from natural causes. A minor injury is an employment injury or occupational disease for which medical treatment is provided, excluding a disabling injury; medical treatment means care at a medical treatment facility, a hospital, clinic, or doctor's office where treatment can be dispensed, not first aid. Other hazardous occurrences cover an explosion, boiler or pressure vessel damage resulting in fire or rupture, elevating device damage rendering it unusable or a free fall, an electric shock or toxic or oxygen-deficient atmosphere causing loss of consciousness, rescue, revival, or similar emergency procedures where emergency medical services attend, and a fire. Count occurrences reported to the employer in the previous calendar year, and enter 0 for any count with none: the form says mandatory fields with no occurrences must show 0, not a blank.

Hours need the same care. Total hours worked must include all hours worked by all employees, full-time, part-time, seasonal, student, and others, on the same page, and must not include data from contractors who do not fit the legal employer-employee relationship. If the organization records work by distance travelled, convert distance to hours by dividing total mileage by the average speed limit encountered; the page gives 60,000 kilometres at 100 kilometres per hour as 600 hours, and 60,000 miles at 60 miles per hour as 1,000 hours. The average weekly hours field replaced the old full-time-equivalent headcount calculation: give the average hours worked per week by one full-time employee, not a headcount. Where employees work both offboard and onboard, capture their injury and employment data separately on each report and do not duplicate it across both. Aviation, rail, and marine employers with onboard activities file two EAHORs; the FAQ above explains when only the Regular report is needed.

3. Gather the year's numbers before signing in

Work from the records the organization already keeps, not from memory in the portal. The year's investigation reports, the log of minor injuries, and payroll or time records are the sources for the counts and hours. Pull, for each workplace, the number of disabling injuries, deaths, minor injuries, and other hazardous occurrences reported during January 1 to December 31 of the previous year, and reconcile each count against the investigation files: every occurrence that produced an investigation report should appear in exactly one count, and every occurrence in a count should trace back to a record. Where the classification is doubtful, use the definitions in section 2 and ask the Labour Program rather than forcing an occurrence into the nearest-looking bucket. A disabling injury misclassified as minor understates the year's serious end; an emergency procedure counted twice, once as an occurrence and once as a rescue, overstates it.

Check the workplace list at the same time, because the prepopulated form will carry last year's list forward. Add any missing or new workplace with its full address and mark its Workplace ID as New. For a workplace that relocated during the year, keep the old location's data on its own row with a ceased date, then add the new location as a separate row marked New, splitting injury and employment data between the two rows by the hours worked at each location. For a legal name change, state it clearly in the Comments section for the headquarters workplace and have the legal document proving the change ready, since the form instructions require a copy as proof. Confirm the main contact name, email, and business telephone, and the headquarters mailing address: the email on file decides whether the January package arrives electronically, and a stale address means the package goes to the wrong place.

4. Get the form: the January package, or a blank download

Timing is built into the cycle. If the organization has an email address on file with the Labour Program, it receives an electronic package in January of each year, with prepopulated forms in Excel format showing the active organization and workplace information from the last submission, according to Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: How to complete. Without an email address on file, the organization receives a letter at its mailing address on file and can download blank copies of the forms. Either way, January is when the filing season opens; February is when it should be nearly done, not when it starts.

Handle the prepopulated form with restraint. If workplace address information on it is wrong and no move occurred, state the correct address in the Comments section for that workplace and do not change any addresses on the prepopulated report, per Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Additional information and resources. The same page states that employers with a valid email on file receive their reports electronically at the start of the calendar year, prepopulated with workplace information from the most recent submission. If the package never arrives by late January, contact the Labour Program to add or update the email address, and download the blank EAHOR form in the meantime: the Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR) - Regular (LAB1009) carries the same fields and instructions, and its Organization ID and Workplace ID fields may be left blank on a first filing or where the ID is unknown. The EAHOR is also available in Excel format, requiring Microsoft Excel 2010 to access, with a PDF version as the alternative, on the How to complete page; if neither opens, contact the Labour Program rather than rebuilding the form from scratch.

5. Sign in or register for LEAF

Start from the LEAF page itself. Labour Electronic Access Form offers two sign-in routes for an existing account, sign in with GCKey or sign in with your bank, and two registration routes for a new account, register with GCKey (either using an existing GCKey or signing up for one) or register with your bank. Choose the route the organization already uses for other federal services where possible, since a second credential for the same organization invites exactly the recovery problem the FAQ above describes. Read and agree to the LEAF Privacy Notice and Terms of Use when prompted; the recovery steps on the same page show that agreement as part of regaining access, and there is no reason to expect the first sign-in to differ.

Prepare the browser before signing in, because LEAF states its own technical requirements and they are old enough to catch a modern default setup. Use Google Chrome version 84 or newer, Safari 13.1.2 or newer, Microsoft Edge 85 or newer, or Mozilla Firefox 68 or newer; Apple users need iOS 13 or newer or macOS 10.15 or newer; enable cookies and JavaScript; and do not bookmark secure LEAF pages, meaning the pages seen after signing in, on the LEAF page. Those version floors were stated on the official page and may have moved since; if the browser is refused, check the LEAF page again for the current list rather than trying another browser at random.

If access is lost, follow the recovery route on the LEAF page, summarized in the FAQ above: recover the GCKey or the bank sign-in where it lives, sign in again, agree to the privacy notice and terms, choose recovery of the existing LEAF account, supply the User Reference Number, answer the security questions, and confirm the new username and password. Do not create a second LEAF account to work around a lost one: a duplicate account risks splitting the organization's filing history, and the recovery route exists precisely to avoid that. What happens inside LEAF after sign-in — which form opens, whether anything is pre-filled, what confirmation appears — was not verified on any page. Follow the prompts on screen, check that the form presented is the EAHOR for the correct reporting year, and stop and call the Labour Program at 1-800-641-4049 if the screens ask for something this guide does not describe.

6. Complete, attest, and submit through LEAF by March 1

Enter the reporting year first and get it right: the reporting year runs January to December of the previous calendar year, per the instructions on the Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR) - Regular (LAB1009). A report filed in early 2027 therefore carries 2026 data, and a report carrying the current year is wrong on its face. Enter the organization legal name as registered with the corporate registry, the common name if different, the business number (the first 9 digits of the Canada Revenue Agency program account number, which may be left blank if unknown), the main contact responsible for annual health and safety reports, email, business telephone, and the headquarters mailing address. Then enter one row per workplace: Workplace ID (blank if unknown, New if new), headquarters Y/N, physical address, the four counts, total hours worked, average weekly hours for one full-time employee (0.00 to 168.00 on the form), in-operation Y/N, date ceased where applicable, and comments.

Attest only what the attester can stand behind. The form's attestation reads: the attester certifies, on behalf of the employer, that the information in the EAHOR is, to the best of their knowledge and belief, true and accurate in every respect. The person attesting should be the person who checked the counts against the investigation records, or should have that check done before attesting. Submitting through LEAF is the route the LEAF page directs businesses to; the in-portal submit step itself was not verified, so confirm on screen that the submission went through, save or print whatever confirmation the screens show, and note the date and method. If LEAF will not present or accept the EAHOR, do not let the portal decide the deadline. The Submit page lists the Data Gateway, email, and mail routes quoted in the FAQ above, and the form lists mail to EAHOR, Labour Program, P.O. Box 4600, Winnipeg, MB R3C 0S1, and email to ESDC.LAB.EAHOR-RAESCR.TRA.EDSC@labour-travail.gc.ca. Use one of those routes, keep proof of sending, and tell the Labour Program that LEAF did not present the form, so the filing is not later treated as a duplicate.

No fee is stated for this filing on any page. If any screen asks for payment, stop and call the Labour Program at 1-800-641-4049 before paying anything. The absence of a fee is not the absence of a consequence: the privacy notice on the form states that providing the information is mandatory and that failure to provide it may result in an inspection or an Administrative Monetary Penalty under the Administrative Monetary Penalties (Canada Labour Code) Regulations. Treat March 1 as a hard date, not a target. All reports are due by March 1 of each year and must include all occurrences reported to the employer in the previous calendar year, according to Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports.

7. Do not confuse the EAHOR with the HOIR, the harassment and violence report, or the committee report

Four annual reports exist, and only one is this guide's filing. Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports lists the EAHOR Regular, the EAHOR Onboard, the Employer's Annual Harassment and Violence Occurrence Report (EAHVOR), and the Work Place Committee Report (WPCR). The EAHVOR covers harassment and violence occurrences noticed under the Work Place Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations, with its own fields for resolution, relationships, and locations; the WPCR covers committee activities and is sent by the chairperson or chairpersons of the Workplace Health and Safety Committee to the regional Labour Program office. Neither is filed on the EAHOR, and neither discharges the EAHOR. File each report the organization owes on its own form, by March 1, and keep the sets separate.

The HOIR contrast is sharper still, because the same occurrence appears in both filings at different times. An occurrence in June is investigated at once, telephoned in within 24 hours if it meets the serious-occurrence list, and reported in writing on LAB1070 within 14 days through the Data Gateway, as Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Recording and Reporting requires. The same occurrence then appears as one unit in the next March 1 EAHOR totals. The HOIR is the detailed, per-occurrence account; the EAHOR is the year's arithmetic. Filing one never replaces the other, and the portals do not interchange: LEAF for the annual report under the LEAF page's wording, the Data Gateway for the HOIR upload. Air, rail, and marine employers add one more split: hazardous occurrences onboard aircraft, trains, and marine vessels go to Transport Canada much as ground occurrences go to the Labour Program, on the same page, so confirm which route an onboard occurrence takes before counting it only in the ground totals.

Keep the filed report and its working papers together. A copy of the report must be kept by the employer for 10 years from the date of submission, per the instructions on the Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR) - Regular (LAB1009), and Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Recording and Reporting puts the same 10-year period on all records of occurrences, including the log of minor injuries, the employer investigation reports including police reports, and the employer annual reports to the Minister. File the submitted EAHOR, the submission note or confirmation, the count worksheets, and the hours calculations in one place, so the next year's preparer can see how each number was reached and the January package can be checked against the prior year instead of rebuilt from nothing.

Related guides:

Filing the annual hazardous occurrence report through LEAF, in five stages

  1. January package arrivesIf the Labour Program has an email address on file, a prepopulated Excel package arrives in January. Without an email on file, a letter arrives by mail and blank forms are downloaded instead.
  2. Gather the previous year's countsFor each workplace, count disabling injuries, deaths, minor injuries, and other hazardous occurrences reported in the previous calendar year, plus total hours worked and the average weekly hours of one full-time employee. Enter 0 where there were none.
  3. Sign in or register for LEAFSign in with GCKey or with your bank, or register by either route. A changed GCKey or bank sign-in needs the User Reference Number and security questions to recover the LEAF account.
  4. Complete, attest, and submit by March 1Complete the EAHOR for the January 1 to December 31 reporting year, attest that it is true and accurate, and submit it through LEAF. The annual deadline is March 1.
  5. Keep a copy for 10 yearsKeep a copy of the submitted report for 10 years from the date of submission, with the counts and hours behind it.

Questions people ask

Is LEAF the only way to submit the EAHOR, or can I use the Data Gateway, email, or mail?

Both official wordings are preserved here, because the pages do not say the same thing. [Labour Electronic Access Form](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/workplace-safety/submit-employer-hazardous-report.html) says federally regulated businesses should sign in or register to LEAF to complete and submit the EAHOR online. [Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Submit](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/workplace-safety/employer-annual-report/submit.html) lists the Data Gateway, email to esdc.lab.eahor-raescr.tra.edsc@labour-travail.gc.ca, and mail to the Labour Program in Winnipeg as the ways to submit the EAHOR, and does not mention LEAF. The form itself, the [Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR) - Regular (LAB1009)](https://catalogue.servicecanada.gc.ca/apps/EForms/pdf/en/ESDC-LAB1009.pdf), lists mail and email only. Start with LEAF, as this guide describes. If LEAF does not present the EAHOR, use one of the routes on the Submit page before March 1 rather than missing the deadline over which portal to use, and ask the Labour Program at 1-800-641-4049 which route it wants for your organization.

We had no incidents last year. Do we still file?

Yes. [Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Recording and Reporting](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/reports/hazardous-occurrence.html) states that each year all employers must submit their completed reports for the preceding calendar year, even if there are no incidents to report. The [Employer's Annual Hazardous Occurrence Report (EAHOR) - Regular (LAB1009)](https://catalogue.servicecanada.gc.ca/apps/EForms/pdf/en/ESDC-LAB1009.pdf) says that for mandatory fields, if there were no occurrences reported, you must enter 0. A zero report still needs the employment data: total hours worked and the average weekly hours of one full-time employee for each workplace. Do not leave a count blank and do not skip the year because nothing happened.

I run the business alone with no staff. Must I file an EAHOR?

Probably not, but the test is whether you employed staff, not whether you call yourself a business owner. [Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Who must submit](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/workplace-safety/employer-annual-report/who-must-submit.html) states that an owner operator who did not employ staff, or act as an employer in an employer-employee relationship, in the previous calendar year would not be required to submit the EAHOR or the harassment and violence report. It also states that having employed staff at any point throughout the reporting year removes that owner-operator position, and the reports are then required. If you are unsure which side of that line you fall on, email esdc.lab.eahor-raescr.tra.edsc@labour-travail.gc.ca or call 1-800-641-4049 and ask the Labour Program before March 1; the same page says an agent will contact you to say which situation applies.

Which EAHOR do we file: Regular or Onboard?

Most employers file the Regular report only. [Employer's Annual Health and Safety Reports: Additional information and resources](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/workplace-safety/employer-annual-report/information.html) states that organizations in the aviation, rail, and marine transport industries must submit two separate EAHORs, Regular (Offboard) and Onboard, with employees' offboard and onboard activities reported separately and never duplicated across the two reports. If your aviation, marine, or rail organization has no employees working onboard, the same page says to contact the Labour Program, state that there is no onboard business, and submit only the Regular report. Hours follow the same split: the Regular report carries only offboard hours and the Onboard report only onboard hours.

I forgot my GCKey, my bank sign-in, or my User Reference Number. How do I get back into LEAF?

Recover the credential where it lives, then recover the LEAF account. [Labour Electronic Access Form](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/workplace-safety/submit-employer-hazardous-report.html) states that a forgotten GCKey is recovered from the Welcome to GCKey page after selecting Sign in with GCKey, and a forgotten bank sign-in must be recovered with the bank before signing in to LEAF. With new GCKey or bank sign-in information, sign in by either route, read and agree to the LEAF Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, choose the option to recover access to an existing LEAF account, provide the User Reference Number, answer the security questions, and confirm the new username and password. A forgotten User Reference Number is recovered through the Forgot my User Reference Number link: enter the email address tied to the account, answer the security questions, and the number arrives by email. Start this well before March 1, since a bank recovery is outside the Labour Program's control.

Does filing the annual report replace the investigation report after an incident?

No. The two filings answer different questions on different clocks. The annual EAHOR totals the previous calendar year's occurrences and employment data and is due by March 1. The Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Report (HOIR, [LAB1070](https://catalogue.servicecanada.gc.ca/apps/EForms/pdf/en/ESDC-LAB1070.pdf)) reports one specific occurrence, follows a telephone report within 24 hours for the serious occurrences listed on [Hazardous Occurrence Investigation Recording and Reporting](https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/health-safety/reports/hazardous-occurrence.html), and must reach a Labour Program Health and Safety Officer in writing within 14 days, uploaded through the Data Gateway. Filing the EAHOR never discharges the 24-hour or 14-day duties, and filing an HOIR never discharges the March 1 annual duty. The HOIR procedure, including the Data Gateway route, is covered separately in the Related guide below. Keep both sets of records for 10 years.

Keep going

Sources

No fee, in-portal LEAF form layout, pre-fill behaviour, or confirmation or receipt step is stated in this guide, because none was verified on an official page. Figures not stated in this guide: any LEAF click path past sign-in or registration, any statement that LEAF issues a confirmation number, any penalty amount for late or missing annual reports beyond the form's statement that failure to provide the information may result in inspection or an Administrative Monetary Penalty, and any reconciliation of the LEAF page's submit-online direction with the Submit page's Data Gateway, email, and mail list, which are presented as both wordings instead. Recheck the LEAF page and the Submit page on the day you file, and call the Labour Program at 1-800-641-4049 if the screens do not present the EAHOR as described.

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