The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
“Something’s wrong,” Sudbury Star mining reporter Carol Mulligan said upon returning from a Vale Canada press conference in January 2012 called to explain the deaths of two miners 3,000 feet underground the previous June. “We’re not getting the whole story.”
On June 8, 2011, Jason Chenier, 35, a father of two young children, and Jordan Fram, 26, were crushed under 350 tonnes of wet, broken ore, known as muck, that had become stuck in a tunnel known as an ore pass.
The nature of the press conference — reporters were allowed to look at information presented, but were not given copies — and the demeanour of the presenters, was odd. Reporters in Sudbury are accustomed to procedures in mining deaths. The report made 30 recommendations to improve safety and the company was acting on them, officials said.
Yet Mulligan’s instincts were right. On Monday, Vale Canada pleaded guilty to three charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The company was fined $350,000 on each charge, plus a 25% surcharge. It was, Crown attorney Wes Wilson said, the largest ever fine levied under the act for health and safety issues. Six other charges were dropped, as were charges against a mine official.