Mourn Our Dead! Fight for the Living!
Suncor Workers Raise Need to Exercise Control Over Working Conditions
Suncor, one of the "big five" oligopolies in the oil sands, and contractor Christina River Construction entered guilty pleas on one count each of violating Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) Act on April 14 in the death of Patrick Poitras. He died on January 13, 2021 after being directed to clear snow from a tailings pond. The ice gave way and his bulldozer crashed through the ice. Conditions were so dangerous that rescue workers were not able to recover his body for two days.
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Patrick PoitrasPatrick was only 25 years old. He had worked in the oil sands for six years, and was planning to return home to New Brunswick for good in mere months. He spoke to his father the night before he died, expressing fear about the dangerous conditions in which he was expected to work.
Twenty-eight charges were initially laid against the companies in November 2022, 19 against Suncor and nine against Christina River Construction. The charges involved ignoring safety protocols, failing to properly check the thickness of the ice while ignoring previous measurements showing the ice was too thin to bear the weight of a bulldozer.
Available ice measurements showed the minimum ice thickness was less than 17 inches as required by Suncor's safety plan. Suncor was also charged with failing to take the weight of snow into account when working on a frozen pond and failure to ensure the site was under the supervision of an ice engineer.
Christina River was also charged with failing to use ground penetrating radar to determine the ice thickness and failing to test if the ice could handle the load of the vehicle. Charges also cited the failure to provide a flotation device and a safety plan in case the bulldozer was submerged.
When the case came to trial on April 14, 26 of the 28 charges were dropped without explanation, and Suncor and the contractor each pleaded guilty to one charge, a deal proposed through a joint submission from the Crown and the defence, and accepted by the presiding judge. They were handed fines of $420,000 and $325,000 respectively.
Patrick Poitras was the twelfth worker to die on the job at Suncor since 2014, not including COVID deaths, which were never reported. Yet the Crown prosecutor dropped most of the serious charges, and instead made a deal, so that those responsible could walk away unscathed.
Suncor had gross profits of $27.707 billion, and net income of $9.077 billion in 2022. It may be legal, but in no way can it be called justice when governments and the state permit these oligopolies to carry on, issuing their rote apologies, and noting the fines in their account books as a minor cost of doing business.
Patrick's heartbroken family has been speaking out strongly about this completely preventable death. His mother, Cathina Cormier, said the Alberta courts failed to provide justice for her son's death. "It's a joke," Cormier told the Journal of Commerce, calling the $420,000 fine of the multibillion-dollar corporation Suncor, a "slap on the wrist." His father spoke of the fact that his son had been very worried about the danger of the job he was expected to do, and that he had urged his son to refuse dangerous work.
Every death of a worker, every precious life ended, brings to the fore the question of how workers can defend their right to safe and healthy workplaces. Even the limited rights of workers that exist in law through the Alberta OH&S legislation have been hollowed out by the Kenney government through Bill 47.
Workers' Forum wrote at the time, "Bill 47 is the latest in a series of legislated attacks on workers and their defence organizations. While the safety and rights of workers are acknowledged in words, Bill 47 significantly lowers the bar when it comes to employer obligations, deprives workers of the right to select their own health and safety representatives, guts the joint worksite health and safety committees, imposes new definitions of unsafe work, and opens the door for employers to discriminate against workers who refuse unsafe work." Bill 47 established a new process for investigating potentially unsafe work, where the employer alone investigates when a worker refuses unsafe work. The worker no longer has the support of a member of the joint workplace OH&S Committee or a fellow worker of their choice.
According to the Criminal Code of Canada, a person who in doing anything, or omitting to do anything that is his duty to do, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons, is guilty of criminal negligence. Duty means duty imposed by law for the purpose of this section. The death of a person through criminal negligence is considered a culpable homicide, that is manslaughter or murder. Yet the usual penalty when a worker dies is a fine.
The Westray Act, which came into force in 2004, was the culmination of over ten years of work by workers and their organizations for legislation to hold employers criminally responsible for injuries and deaths of workers due to their actions or inactions.[1] Almost 20 years later, there have been only two convictions, and only one person has gone to jail for criminal negligence causing a workplace death. In the twenty-one years from 2001 to 2021, 320 workers died in the oil and gas sector in Alberta and Saskatchewan alone.
Workers and their families continue to speak out and to resist these attacks on their rights, and show their determination to hold governments and employers to account. Workers know from experience that they must rely on their own unity and organization. They are the ones who take up their social responsibilities for safe workplaces, and it is the workers who must exercise control over their working conditions.
Note
1. On May 9, 1992, all twenty-six miners working in the Westray coal mine in Nova Scotia were killed when methane gas ignited, causing an explosion. Workers, union officials and government inspectors had all raised serious safety concerns before the tragedy, all of which the company had refused to act on.
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 5 - May 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M5300511.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca