Mr. Speaker, in my riding, which is adjacent to Hamilton, there is a bronze sculpture that was created a few years ago which caused a lot of controversy in my riding. It is to commemorate those who have died in the workplace. What it is comprised of is a huge slab. A workman is holding on to the edge of the slab backward and he is headless. It is very, very dramatic. Many people in the Hamilton community were almost offended by this piece of sculpture, and yet it makes its point enormously eloquently.
I should say that Hamilton is an industrial town. It has two major steel corporations and a number of heavy industries. I hate to say it, but industrial accidents are not an infrequent occurrence. Fortunately they are much rarer than they used to be 20, 30 or 40 years ago, but they still occur.
The problem with industrial accidents is that it is very difficult to determine if negligence occurred. Sometimes it may not be negligence at all. It may be that the firm has done everything it thought was correct, but still the accidents occur. The problem is, where do we draw the line between no negligence, negligence and wilful negligence. This motion is directed toward the idea of wilful negligence.
For a number of years during my youth I was a police reporter at the local newspaper. I had the occasion to be on the scene of a number of industrial accidents. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing more horrible than to see somebody who has been absolutely crushed to a pulp by some sort of machine, or has been pulled into a machine, or some young person who suffocated as a result of going into a chamber in which the air was exhausted. These things do occur and they are dreadful tragedies. When one has any kind of experience with that one can certainly appreciate and sympathize with the very strong feelings of the relatives of those at Westray who lost their lives.
The difficulty I have with the motion is twofold. One is this concept of where one draws the line between criminal negligence as already defined in the criminal code and some other area of wilful negligence that is not defined in the code. I am not certain you can do that very easily, Mr. Speaker. I am just not certain at all.
The other point I would like to make is the problem that the motion also uses the words “corporate executives”. The motion is directed against this idea that corporations, in their haste to make profit, are the ones that are most likely to be negligent to the point of risking their workers in a criminal way.