Le mode de financement de la CNESST comme vecteur de la prévention des accidents du travail et des maladies professionnelles : qu’en est-il réellement ?

This text aims to analyze the concept of prevention and its link to the funding of the CNESST, and particularly in connection with the use of experience rating. Based on a review of the literature and a historical analysis of legislation and parliamentary debates, it provides an overview of the evolution of the financing of the occupational health and safety system in Quebec. I will look at the concept of prevention in order to see how it was mobilized to justify the transformations of the regime and more particularly those that took place at the turn of the 1990s. I will then discuss the issues that are currently raised by the use of experience rating. The effectiveness of experience rating as an incentive to prevention is subject of only moderate proof, and this despite the fact that it has been broadened and mobilized in order to justify the tangent taken by governments concerning the financing of the regime. In addition, it appears experience rating is likely to generate among employers’ behaviours that prove to be contradictory with the principle of prevention of occupational accidents and diseases, in particular by outsourcing risks and costs and by the managing of claims.