What is the duty of an occupier under the Occupier’s Liability Act?

The nature of the duty under The Occupier’s Liability Act was explained by Professor Klar in Tort Law, 4th ed. (Toronto: Carswell, 2008), at p. 607: Despite the inelegant wording, the statutory duty of care is akin to the ordinary common law duty of care, as developed in the negligence action. The duty is based on an objective test of reasonable care, which includes factors such as reasonable foreseeability, reasonable risk, and so on. And at p. 609: The duty imposed by the legislation is to ensure that premises are reasonably safe for persons and their property. Depending on all the circumstances of a case, it very well may be that premises are already reasonably safe, without any further positive action being required by an occupier. Positive steps should only be required to remedy an unreasonably dangerous situation, where reasonable measures could have been taken. As stated by Iacobucci J. in Waldick v. Malcolm, “the goals of the Act are to promote, and indeed require, where circumstances warrant, positive action on the part of the occupiers to make their premises reasonably safe.” As well, one must recall that the burden of proving that the premises were unreasonably safe and that the occupier thus has failed in its duty rests on the plaintiff. [emphasis added; footnotes omitted]

I accept that a fire in a house is a reasonably foreseeable event and that there is a duty on occupiers to take reasonable steps to prevent those who enter their premises from being harmed by fire, whether that fire is caused by accident or the intentional act of third parties. I also accept that reasonable steps include installing smoke detectors. As Gerein J. said in Bueckert v. Mattison (1997), 1996 CanLII 6701 (SK QB), 149 Sask.R. 81, [1996] S.J. No. 660 (Q.B.)(QL), at par. 55, “A reasonable person could easily foresee that a failure to install a smoke detector could result in injury or even death.”