A Weyburn court has given SaskPower one of the largest fines for a workplace accident in recent Canadian history for the death of two workers in Weyburn four years ago.
The $840,000 penalty, which includes victim surcharges, was imposed Friday morning in a Weyburn courtroom packed with the victims’ family members and coworkers.
The fines tems from an April decision where the court found SaskPower, the province’s electrical utility, guilty of three workplace safety violations: failing to ensure workplace health and safety, falling short on training and supervision, and not having a proper requirement for workers to use a fall arrest system.
According to court documents, Scott Bill and Cole Crooks, who both had 19 years of experience, were working on power lines and fell to their deaths after the bucket they were in tipped over in October 2020.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) 2067 represented the two men. Ken Hoste, union representative, said he hopes the case can raise more awareness about the need for stringent safety procedures.
“No fine or court ruling is really going to bring these guys home to their families at night. We only hope that it’ll change the safety culture.”
In the April decision, the judge found the bucket the men were working in “had a tilting issue.” It tipped over and ejected the men. A broken bolt was later discovered on inspection of the bucket’s arm.
The decision said neither worker had their safety belt lanyard anchored to the bucket as they should have.
Since the incident, SaskPower made some improvements, including having a three-way communication system to ensure everyone is clipped in and making scales available, allowing work crews to keep a closer watch on weight capacity for buckets.
The court observed that it was “unfortunate that this system was not in place before the workers fell.”
Sean Tucker, professor of occupational health and safety at University of Regina, has analyzed workplace injury fines from 2019 to present in all provinces but N.L., P.E.I., and Quebec.
Friday’s fine is the second highest in that data set, behind last year’s Ontario Court of Justice decision fining Eastway Tank, Pump and Meter to pay $850,000 after an incident that saw six people die from an explosion.
Tucker said the Friday sentencing is “significant” and could have a ripple effect beyond Saskatchewan.
“This penalty, while not as high as some of us had hoped, sends a strong deterrence message to the employer community and in particular large employers in Saskatchewan,” he said.
SaskPower was previously found guilty in the 2020 deaths of two workers, who plunged to their deaths while working on power lines in the community of Weyburn.
In 2014, the provincial government made modifications to sentencing guidelines, increasing the maximum penalty for a corporation in Saskatchewan to $1.5M.
Tucker said such fines ensure that corporations like SaskPower are held accountable for worker safety.
“The public, when they see a case like this, needs to understand that the employer in OHS [Occupational Health and Safety Legislation] law carries the most responsibility for injury prevention,” he said.
Tucker said employers need to employ more layers of safety.
Lianne Lefsrud, a professor in the David and John Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management at the University of Alberta, said companies shouldn’t solely rely on safety measure like being clipped.
“Relying on a single line of defence is no defence at all.”
Lefsrud said the larger fine doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s better.
“I would argue that it is actually worrisome,” she said.
“What would make more sense is if that same money was used to address the underlying causes, the latent causes of the input in the first place, through creative sentencing.”
Creative sentencing, she said, could mean enhanced regulatory supervision where money from fines is used to research the latent causes of an incident and how it could be prevented in the future. That, in turn, could lead to training workers in fall protection or designing fall protection programs or systems, Lefsrud said.
