A Manifesto for Residential Sloped Roofing in Canada

In Manitoba, there have been two deaths this year from roofers falling from roofs.

Two people went to work and didn’t come home. Two families were changed forever. And the roofing industry absorbed the news, grieved quietly, and kept working. Because that is what we do. Because there is no other option. Because the phones keep ringing and the work is not optional, it still needs to get done.

These deaths are tragic, and every roofing and siding contractor knows that at any moment this could happen to someone in their business (including them).

This is a manifesto. It is a call to action — to contractors, to industry associations and to government regulators. This industry is suffering.  It currently falls between the cracks and is experiencing unique problems.

 

The Problem

Government wants the sloped roofing industry to improve safety, but they haven’t provided an environment for success; the fall protection solutions are inadequate, their enforcement focus is producing results that are counter to their goals, and the industry is not sophisticated, organized, or resourced enough to advocate for their needs.

Let me try and explain.

 

Commercial vs Residential

Residential sloped roofing exists in a regulatory no man’s land.

Commercial construction is heavily regulated. There are permits, inspections, certified trades, and enforcement mechanisms that create accountability at every stage. When something goes wrong on a commercial site, there is a clear chain of responsibility and a system designed to prevent it from happening again.  The industry has a voice and can speak effectively to government on issues of all kinds.

Residential retrofit roofing — the replacement of an existing roof on a home — operates under almost none of that. In most provinces, including Manitoba, a homeowner can hire virtually anyone to replace their roof. There is no licensing requirement. No mandatory certification. No permit required in most jurisdictions. No inspector who shows up afterward to verify the work was done correctly. The homeowner rolls the dice and hopes for the best.

This is not a niche problem. Residential roofing is one of the most physically dangerous trades in construction. Workers operate at height, on sloped surfaces, in all weather conditions, under time pressure, usually without adequate training or safety systems. The fall hazard alone makes it one of the leading causes of serious injury and death in the construction sector — not just in Manitoba, but across Canada and the United States.

Our provincial Acts and Regulations say that guardrails are the preferred method for fall protection, and these are what you see used on commercial jobsites everywhere, but despite that, regulators continue to push “tying off” with rope and harness as the solution in residential.  The industry has pushed back on this for over 15 years saying that there are situations where it is impossible to comply.  Workplace Health and Safety has responded to that by increasing disciplinary actions to try and force the change to take place.  I’ve covered these issues in more detail in a past article: Safety Compliance Challenges Facing Sloped Roofers.

There is a fundamental mismatch between the risk profile of this work and the regulatory framework that governs it. Sloped roofing is not a simple home repair. It is skilled, dangerous, technical work that directly affects the structural integrity of a building, the safety of the people who live in it, and the lives of the workers who perform it.

The work shouldn’t be performed by:

• people at the fringes of employment with minimal training.
• people in a rush to meet short time deadlines.
• contractors that don’t operate legally; without insurance and WCB coverage, without a registered business number, without source deductions and taxes being paid properly to government, and without a safety program.

The current system asks workers to operate in a space that is neither fully regulated nor fully free. Fall protection rules were written without adequate consultation with the roofing industry, and as a result they often create more hazards than they prevent on single story, walkable pitched residential roofs.  Workers are put in impossible positions where compliance is not possible. And the companies that are genuinely trying to do things right — carrying proper insurance, running safety programs, paying their workers correctly — are competing against operators who carry none of those costs and face none of those consequences.  The push is in the wrong direction, rather than small companies trying to improve and become better, safer, and operate more professionally they are instead tempted to remove the decals from their trucks and try to fly under the radar.

It is the opposite of progress.  This is a complete regulatory failure.

 

What Needs to Change

This is not a complicated list. Other trades have done all of this already. There is no reason roofing cannot do the same.

1. Mandatory certification for sloped roofing installers.

No one should be installing a residential roof in this province without demonstrated training and a recognized credential. This means a formal certification pathway — apprenticeship, assessment, and a license to do the work. Not a suggestion. Not a best practice. A requirement.  Exactly how we do things for commercial work.

This is how we protect workers. When someone knows how to do the job correctly, they are less likely to get hurt doing it. And when certification is required, the workforce that fills this trade is drawn from people who have committed to learning it properly — not whoever showed up looking for work after a storm.

This is also how we protect homeowners. A certification requirement gives the public a way to verify who they are hiring. It gives insurers a clear standard for underwriting. It gives the industry a floor below which no one is allowed to operate.

2. Companies must meet minimum standards to operate in this trade.

A business offering residential roofing services should be required to demonstrate, at minimum: legal registration, liability insurance, workers compensation coverage, and a basic safety program. These are not extraordinary requirements. They are the baseline for operating a legitimate business in any other regulated trade.

MECA has been vetting its members against these criteria for years. We know it is achievable. We know the bar is not unreasonably high. What we need is for government to make it the floor for everyone — not just the members of an association that is trying to do the right thing.

3. A fall protection framework that reflects the reality of residential roofing.

The current fall protection rules were not designed with residential sloped roofing in mind. Rope and harness systems do not function effectively in many situations and create genuine hazards on low-pitch residential roofs — increased tripping risk, restricted mobility, equipment that cannot function safely in the fall distances available. Workers and contractors have been saying this for years. The data supports it. It is time for regulators to work with the industry to develop a framework that actually protects workers rather than creating compliance theatre.

This does not mean abandoning fall protection. It means developing fall protection standards that are informed by the actual conditions of residential roofing work, in collaboration with the people who do that work every day.

4. Permits and inspections for residential roofing work.

In most jurisdictions, replacing a roof requires no permit. This means no record, no inspections, no verification that the work was done to code. No accountability when it isn’t.

A permit requirement changes the entire accountability structure. It creates a record that the work was done. It brings inspections into the process. It gives the homeowner recourse when something goes wrong. And it signals to the market that this work is regulated — that the person doing it is accountable to a higher standard.

5. Enforcement focused on negligent, bad-faith actors.

We would like to see an enforcement environment where the focus is primarily on those that are not even trying.  The industry can not regulate this themselves, we rely on government for regulation.  We are asking them to remove from the market the operators who put workers on roofs with no safety program and no insurance, the ones who leave behind work that does not meet code, harms homeowners and undermines the reputation of every legitimate contractor in the trade.

The current system creates compliance burdens that fall hardest on established, visible companies with real safety programs, while operators who have no safety program at all are never inspected because they are too small to be noticed. This needs to end. Enforcement resources should be targeted at the worst actors, not distributed uniformly across an industry where the best-run companies are the most visible targets.

The best operators can not be scrutinized for perfection when they have to complete with those that are not even operating legitimately. 

This Is Not Just a Manitoba Problem

Everything described above is playing out in every province and in every US state. The residential roofing trade across North America is facing the same structural failure: dangerous work, inadequate regulation, a workforce that is undertrained and underprotected, and consumers who have no reliable way to distinguish between a qualified contractor and someone who bought a nail gun last week.

 

What We Are Asking For

We are asking government to treat residential sloped roofing as a skilled, regulated trade  — not as a home repair that anyone can do.  It is time that they up their game when it comes to residential retrofit work as a whole, and roofing is the place to start.

We are asking insurers to require certification and minimum business standards as a condition of claims payment on roofing work. The insurance industry has enormous leverage here. It should use it.

We are asking contractors to push for certification — not because it is mandatory yet, but because it is right. The contractors who are already running professional operations have nothing to fear from a higher bar. They have everything to gain from a market where their competitors are held to the same standard.

We are asking homeowners to demand credentials before they sign a contract. Ask to see the certification. Ask for the WCB number. Ask for the liability insurance certificate. A contractor who has these things will be eager to show them. One who doesn’t should not be on your roof.

And we are asking the workers in this trade — the ones who go up on rooftops every day — to know that there are people fighting for a system that protects them. You deserve to work in a trade that is serious about your safety. That is not the trade you are currently in. We are trying to change that.

 

The Cost of Moving Slow

Some positive steps have been made but we need government to push this change.

Every year we wait is another year of preventable injuries. Another year of homeowners paying for work that fails. Another year of legitimate contractors being undercut by operators who survive only because they externalize their costs onto workers and customers. Another year of a trade that cannot grow because it cannot earn the trust it deserves.

We recognize that this is a complicated issue, but we do not have collaboration between industry, regulation and enforcement.  The government does not take our voice seriously, and we’ve been asking them for help for at least 10 years.

It is time to regulate this trade. Not eventually. Now.