Read Sid Ryan’s OP ED piece in the Hamilton Spectator
Police must enforce new safety law
Employers must get the message 'If you kill a worker, you go to jail'
After two years of extensive efforts to reform health and safety legislation and with new regulations and policies now in place, Ontario's labour movement begins 2012 with hopes for dramatically reduced workplace deaths and injuries.
Prevention - the most important bulwark against mounting catastrophes - has finally been freed from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board where the Harris government had buried it for years after dismantling the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. Now, labour once again has a strong voice. In combination with other crucial changes, such as the extra attention paid to the issue of reprisals by employers when workers report health and safety concerns and heavier emphasis on training for everyone, the reformed system holds great promise. It must deliver. The health and well-being of every single working person is at stake.
The provincial government, much to its credit, played a central role in the revamping and strengthening of the new legislation. While training, education and enforcement are vital, they are only one part of an equation that must also include punishment for those who flout the law.
Since 2004, a Criminal Code provision known as the Westray Bill has been on the books, but few charges have ever been laid and there has not been one successful prosecution in Ontario. Why is that? Why has it been left to the labour movement to do the heavy lifting of educating police departments about its use?
The Criminal Code enables the Crown to hold individuals and corporations criminally liable for negligence causing death. Its maximum sentence is life in prison and heavy fines. It falls to the provincial attorney general and the community safety and correctional services minister to ensure that crown attorneys, police chiefs and officers are motivated and educated, but police regularly tell us they either do not know about the Criminal Code provision or know about it only in the most minimal way.
In the absence of government action, the OFL has had to step in. Whenever we hear of a workplace death, we send out our package of information to the police service involved in the investigation and follow with a phone call. So far, we have been in contact with 25 police forces, some multiple times.
There will always be unscrupulous employers, companies that value profit over human life and put their employees in harm's way because they refuse to spend money to ensure their workplace is safe and healthy. Always. Criminal sanctions are the only way to deal with them.
Two men, highly skilled workers, who were loved and respected, were buried alive by tons of falling rock; a father, only hours away from taking his daughter trick-or-treating, a victim of such a powerful explosion that it took days to confirm his identity; men and women drowned, crushed, electrocuted, impaled and killed at work - 500 deaths since 2004, but no convincing action.
Yet that is what the Criminal Code provision is there for and why it came into being in the first place. The tantalizing prospect of 15 years of paid employment drew scores of workers to the newly opened Westray Coal Mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Less than a year later, when windows shattered and homes shook in nearby towns, 26 miners lay dead and buried. The fire and explosion resulted from the company's determination to get the coal out at any price. For the Westray victims and their families, the Criminal Code turned out to be completely inadequate to deal with the scale of the company's wrongdoing. Not one person went to jail for even a day. Its uselessness prompted years of relentless lobbying by the United Steelworkers and families of the dead miners. Finally, they won the unanimous consent of Parliament for new Criminal Code provisions that could hold individuals and corporations criminally liable for negligence causing death.
The province must use it. Doing so will not only prevent more deaths but will also curb mounting workplace injuries - 242,371 in Ontario in 2010. For starters, the government must take immediate steps to educate crown attorneys, police chiefs and police officers. Every workplace death must be investigated through the lens of possible criminal negligence.
As we begin a new year, one with new legislation in place, we must see convincing action the government means what it says about safety being all-important in our workplaces. Every employer must get the message that if you kill a worker, you go to jail. Then, and only then, will those doing business understand that the most important thing to come out of the workplace is not a profit: It is the worker.
The Criminal Code gives us the means to forge this culture change. The government must find the will to use it.
cope343
Employers must get the message 'If you kill a worker, you go to jail'
After two years of extensive efforts to reform health and safety legislation and with new regulations and policies now in place, Ontario's labour movement begins 2012 with hopes for dramatically reduced workplace deaths and injuries.
Prevention - the most important bulwark against mounting catastrophes - has finally been freed from the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board where the Harris government had buried it for years after dismantling the Workplace Health and Safety Agency. Now, labour once again has a strong voice. In combination with other crucial changes, such as the extra attention paid to the issue of reprisals by employers when workers report health and safety concerns and heavier emphasis on training for everyone, the reformed system holds great promise. It must deliver. The health and well-being of every single working person is at stake.
The provincial government, much to its credit, played a central role in the revamping and strengthening of the new legislation. While training, education and enforcement are vital, they are only one part of an equation that must also include punishment for those who flout the law.
Since 2004, a Criminal Code provision known as the Westray Bill has been on the books, but few charges have ever been laid and there has not been one successful prosecution in Ontario. Why is that? Why has it been left to the labour movement to do the heavy lifting of educating police departments about its use?
The Criminal Code enables the Crown to hold individuals and corporations criminally liable for negligence causing death. Its maximum sentence is life in prison and heavy fines. It falls to the provincial attorney general and the community safety and correctional services minister to ensure that crown attorneys, police chiefs and officers are motivated and educated, but police regularly tell us they either do not know about the Criminal Code provision or know about it only in the most minimal way.
In the absence of government action, the OFL has had to step in. Whenever we hear of a workplace death, we send out our package of information to the police service involved in the investigation and follow with a phone call. So far, we have been in contact with 25 police forces, some multiple times.
There will always be unscrupulous employers, companies that value profit over human life and put their employees in harm's way because they refuse to spend money to ensure their workplace is safe and healthy. Always. Criminal sanctions are the only way to deal with them.
Two men, highly skilled workers, who were loved and respected, were buried alive by tons of falling rock; a father, only hours away from taking his daughter trick-or-treating, a victim of such a powerful explosion that it took days to confirm his identity; men and women drowned, crushed, electrocuted, impaled and killed at work - 500 deaths since 2004, but no convincing action.
Yet that is what the Criminal Code provision is there for and why it came into being in the first place. The tantalizing prospect of 15 years of paid employment drew scores of workers to the newly opened Westray Coal Mine in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. Less than a year later, when windows shattered and homes shook in nearby towns, 26 miners lay dead and buried. The fire and explosion resulted from the company's determination to get the coal out at any price. For the Westray victims and their families, the Criminal Code turned out to be completely inadequate to deal with the scale of the company's wrongdoing. Not one person went to jail for even a day. Its uselessness prompted years of relentless lobbying by the United Steelworkers and families of the dead miners. Finally, they won the unanimous consent of Parliament for new Criminal Code provisions that could hold individuals and corporations criminally liable for negligence causing death.
The province must use it. Doing so will not only prevent more deaths but will also curb mounting workplace injuries - 242,371 in Ontario in 2010. For starters, the government must take immediate steps to educate crown attorneys, police chiefs and police officers. Every workplace death must be investigated through the lens of possible criminal negligence.
As we begin a new year, one with new legislation in place, we must see convincing action the government means what it says about safety being all-important in our workplaces. Every employer must get the message that if you kill a worker, you go to jail. Then, and only then, will those doing business understand that the most important thing to come out of the workplace is not a profit: It is the worker.
The Criminal Code gives us the means to forge this culture change. The government must find the will to use it.
For More Information:
Patrick (Sid) Ryan, President
p: 416.441.2731 | m: 416.209.0066 | f: 416.441.0722
Toll-free: 1-800-668-9138
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