Upon conviction of an offense, Occupational Health and Safety
legislation in Canada provides for a range of penalties that include
tickets, monetary fines and/or jail time. For truly egregious
behaviours, the law provides for prosecution under the Criminal Code
of Canada (CCC), which provides for lengthy prison time as well as unlimited fine amounts. In the past, even though the law provided for jail time, the consequences for conviction of occupational health and safety (OHS) offenses were usually limited to monetary penalties. However, the law can be likened to that of an organism, in that it tends to change over time. It would appear that a time of change is upon us.
Recent convictions for occupational health and safety offenses, that
have involved illness, critical injury and fatalities, have shown that
there is an increasing willingness on the part of the courts to include
jail time as part of the punishment for responsible parties. Nationally,
in the last few years, numerous supervisors have been sentenced to
jail time for cases involving worker fatalities and the lack of adequate
protective measures like guarding, preventative maintenance, training
and personal protective equipment.
In Ontario, two corporate directors of a furniture manufacturer and
retailer had been sentenced to 25 days in jail for failing to provide the
basic minimum standards for fall protection. In this case, a worker fell
to his death from an inappropriately modified unguarded elevated
work platform, and the worker had not been provided with any sort of
personal fall protection equipment or training in the job-specific
hazards. In Quebec a worker was run over and killed by a backhoe
without brakes that was driven by his employer. That case led to a
prosecution under the Criminal Code of Canada and resulted in a
two-year sentence for the employer. It should also be noted that
prosecutions under other laws may have a similar result as well.
In the last few years there have been company directors sentenced to
jail time under the Employment Standards Act (Ontario), for
repeatedly ignoring orders to pay workers wages owed. In this case,
the company director was ordered again, to pay wages owed, fined
$15,000 and sentenced to ninety days in jail.
These examples may be interpreted as a signal that the courts are
increasingly unwilling to tolerate blatant breaches of the rules and
standards that circumscribe minimally acceptable behaviours in our
society. While in the past, monetary fines were seen as sufficient to
deter others from similar lapses or failures within their internal
responsibility system; it seems that the pattern of companies
continuing to ignore the laws of our society must be met with a
greater deterrent.
Thus, courts seem to be resorting to more forceful methods of getting
the message out to senior corporate executives. As always, health
and safety legislation demands due diligence and employers and
supervisors that ignore this mandate risk more than just money; they
might possibly risk their personal freedom.
Trust MSW
MSW offers an online Opioid Awareness module.
You can trust MSW to provide you with cost-effective training solutions tailored to meet your organization’s unique health and
safety needs.
To ask to learn more, contact us online or call 289.309.1143. Visit us 24/7 on the web at mswsafety.ca
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