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Vale Canada Limited has been fined $150,000 in provincial court in Winnipeg and ordered to pay $37,500 in a victim surcharge after pleading guilty June 18 in a previously unreported decision to one count of failing to ensure the safety, health and welfare of all workers, contrary to The Workplace Safety and Health Act, in connection with the death of 51-year-old T-3 scooptram operator Greg Leason at Manitoba Operations in Thompson almost three years ago.
Vale was charged last Oct. 3. The Leason case marked the first time Vale, or its predecessor, Inco, had been charged by the province in connection with a mining fatality since mining began in Thompson,
The charge upon which Vale was convicted and nine other charges laid against Vale by Manitoba Labour and Immigration’s Workplace Safety and Health Branch, also under The Workplace Safety and Health Act, in connection with the the death of Leason, which were ordered stayed, all listed an offence date of Oct. 7, 2011, the date of the accident.
While stayed charges technically can be re-activated within one year of the day they are stayed by the prosecution, in practice they almost never are, unless the accused is charged with new offences during the one year period after the original charges have been stayed. When charges are withdrawn instead of stayed, the prosecution of those charges is finished immediately.
Leason died at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg 12 days after the scooptram he was operating, while installing a safety bumper at the 3500 level of the T-3 mine on Oct. 7, 2011, fell into a 30 to 45-metre deep pit in the mine.
A co-worker who had arrived at the open stope to assist Leason with the installation of a rockfill bumper, which serves as a barrier, discovered that the scooptram had entered the void and fallen to the level below. Leason was quickly located by co-workers who immediately began the evacuation process. Thompson Fire and Emergency Services met them underground and Leason was rushed to Thompson General Hospital as a result of the accident, which occurred during a regular shift.
After being stabilized, he was medevaced via Lifeflight Air Ambulance to Winnipeg’s Health Sciences Centre where he succumbed to his injuries on Oct. 19, 2011, almost two weeks after the accident, with family, including his fiancé Debbie Petroff, and his close friend, Wayne Skwarchuk, by his side. Leason had just turned 51 and had 23 years of service with the company. Many of Leason’s other close friends were with him throughout his time in hospital. Besides Skwarchuk, Terry Didluck, Garry Schultz, Guy Thompson, Dan Dnistransky, Victor Monan, Marlin Katchmar, Vince Nowlin, along with many other friends and acquaintances, were at the hospital.
Leason was born Oct. 16, 1960 in Regina and moved to Thompson in 1965 and lived here for the remainder of his life.
The nine stayed charges included failing to comply with The Workplace Safety and Health Act and regulations; contravening the act by not providing not providing and maintaining a safe workplace, equipment, systems and tools; breaching a regulation by failing to develop and implement safe work procedures for users of powered mobile equipment where powered mobile equipment is used in the workplace; failing to train workers in safe work procedures for powered mobile equipment in a workplace where powered mobile equipment is used; failing to ensure that workers comply with safe work procedures for powered mobile equipment in a workplace where powered mobile equipment is used; three counts of breaching Manitoba Regulation 217/2006 S. 22.3(1)(a) by failing to ensure that powered mobile equipment is inspected by a competent person for defects and unsafe conditions as often as necessary to ensure equipment is in safe operating condition; and failing to ensure that when powered mobile equipment is in use, the operator and any other worker required or permitted to be in or on the equipment use seats and seatbelts or other restraining devices.
As the Leason case marked the first time Vale, or its predecessor, Inco, had been charged by the province in connection with a mining fatality since mining began in Thompson, USW Local 6166 president Murray Nychyporuk said it sent an important symbolic message about workplace safety in the Manitoba mining industry, although charges had been laid, convictions registered and fines imposed on other mining companies elsewhere in the province previously. “I think it’s a clear message by the mines’ branch that you have to provide a safe workplace and they’re going to be very strict,” Nychyporuk said.
Ryan Land, manager of corporate affairs and organizational development for Vale’s Manitoba Operations, said in a statement on behalf of the company Oct. 1, “The health and safety of our employees is our highest priority. The tragic loss of Greg Leason is another reminder that we can never relax in our efforts to manage risk effectively and ensure that incidents like this are never repeated. Our thoughts continue to be with his family, friends and co-workers.”