A royal honour for IHSA’s President and CEO

Enzo Garritano gets the King Charles III Coronation Medal for his dedication to worker safety.

Enzo Garritano, President and CEO of IHSA, received the King Charles III Coronation Medal during a ceremony at Queen’s Park in May 2025.

Garritano was honoured for his commitment to strengthening Ontario’s occupational health and safety system and preventing injuries, illnesses, and fatalities in the Ontario construction, transportation, electrical utilities, and aggregates industries. He was nominated by Premier Doug Ford.

The medal was awarded to 30,000 people who contributed to the country or a specific province, territory, region, or community. People were also eligible if they made an achievement abroad that reflected positively on Canada. Administered by the Office of the Secretary to the Governor General of Canada, it’s the first Canadian commemorative medal to mark a coronation.

Creating safer workplaces together

The award, Garritano says, represents the value that Canada and Ontario put on worker protections— especially in the high-risk sectors that build and maintain the province’s critical infrastructure. He says that organizations must work together to create safer workplaces and points to a network of health and safety system partners that make Ontario one of the safest places in the world to work.

“There are many contributors that ensure this happens, including government, associations like IHSA, employers, workers, unions, and suppliers,” Garritano says.

“I’m proud of IHSA’s efforts—with the assistance of our Labour-Management Network and Board of Directors—and want to recognize staff, past and present, who deserve a piece of this recognition.”

Garritano has worked at IHSA for more than 27 years. Before becoming President and CEO in 2016, he held several different roles where he managed the association’s technical content and its extensive Labour-Management Network. He focuses on raising awareness of risks, promoting prevention strategies, and simplifying the setup of occupational health and safety management systems. His work guides IHSA’s vision of safe and healthy workplaces free of incidents, injuries, illnesses, or fatalities.

Understanding the next steps

Continued progress in workplace safety, he says, depends on system-level change and a shift in workplace health and safety culture.

“Creating a growing and prosperous Canada is in all of our interests, but that becomes secondary if our workers are injured, become ill, or worse,” he says.

“I’m hopeful that with the uptake of occupational health and safety management systems among employers and buyers of service, as well as an improving culture of care and awareness among all workers, Ontario will continue to be a leader in ensuring workers arrive home healthy and safe every day.”

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