Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to address the motion of my colleague from Nova Scotia, the member for Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough. It is also my pleasure to indicate that he will have, as he knows, my support on the motion. He will have the support of our party as well.
His motion calls for the government to act upon recommendation No. 73 of the public inquiry of the province of Nova Scotia into the Westray disaster and to amend the Criminal Code accordingly. It mirrors very much a bill that was introduced by the leader of our party in relation to the Westray disaster in January 1999. Our bill details the specific changes to the Criminal Code required to address the concerns of corporate liability and workplace safety as indicated in the Westray report.
I began by saying the hon. member knows he will have my support. I come from the same province. I come from a coal mining community. I remember well the Westray disaster because that day I was not in Nova Scotia. My wife and I had taken some time and were outside the province. When we called home and spoke to the caregiver who was looking after our children we did not talk about the weather. We did not talk a whole lot. The first thing we were apprised of was the situation in Westray.
It is perhaps difficult for those who do not live in mining communities to understand the impact of that news. Coming from Cape Breton we knew that it would be our friends and colleagues who would volunteer to go into those mines to find the bodies of the 26 coal miners who were killed, and they did.
For those who live in communities where there are coal mines, for those who live in industrial communities, it is difficult to describe how ingrained and how we know that disaster lurks around the corner. When a whistle blows, when there is the sound of an explosion from the blast furnace, when we look at the changing colour of the sky and the fishermen are out on the water, we know that there will be disaster.
We live with that reality every day. The miners in Stellarton live with that. The miners in Sydney mines and New Waterford live with that and the fishermen live with that. It colours the way we react. There is some romance around that but it leads to certain harsh realities. It leads to some good realities. It leads to the way we share things. It leads to a sense of community. It leads to a sense of humour that is mirrored in the works of our poets and artists and in the songs of our musicians.
We live with the frustrating knowledge that corporations which exploit workers in areas of high unemployment in dangerous settings literally get away with murder. It is that reality which the motion and the New Democratic Party's bill seek to address.
I say this having listened to the speaker on the government side. I will not dwell on it, but one of the real concerns we have as the government dismantles the Cape Breton Development Corporation is that it will move to a private mine without a union under provincial jurisdiction, without the protections we now have, which were the very circumstances that led to the disaster at Westray. I urge the government to bear that in mind.
There are ways to prevent this. One way is to accept the motion and the New Democratic Party's bill. I will read from the wording of Justice Richard in the Westray report:
The Westray Story is a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity, neglect—Viewed in context, these seemingly isolated incidents constitute a mindset or operating philosophy that appears to favour expediency over intelligent planning and that trivializes safety concerns. Indeed, management at Westray displayed a certain disdain for safety and appeared to regard safety conscious workers as the wimps in the organization. To its discredit, the management at Westray, through either incompetence or ignorance, lost sight of the basic tenet of coal mining that safe mining is good business.
The tale that unfolds in the Westray report is a story of incompetence, of mismanagement, of bureaucratic bungling, of deceit, of ruthlessness, of cover-up, of apathy, of expediency and of cynical indifference. It is a tragic story with the inevitable moments of pathos and heroism. The Westray story concerns an event that in all good common sense ought not to have occurred. It did occur and that is our unfortunate legacy. It is in fact our unfortunate tragedy.
There are ways to stop this. There are ways to stop criminal murder by corporations of their workers. That is what our bill will seek to address and that is what the motion seeks to address. There are ways it can be done by amending the Criminal Code.
In that report Justice Richard pointed out those ways. He suggested that there be a new criminal offence that would impose criminal liability on directors or others responsible for failing to ensure their corporation maintains an appropriate standard of occupational health and safety in the workplace, a criminal offence of corporate killing.
Justice Richard said “in the context of Westray these deserve consideration”. They deserve more than consideration; they demand action. Recommendation No. 73 states that the Government of Canada through the Department of Justice should institute a study of the accountability of corporate executives and directors for the wrongful or negligent acts of corporations and should introduce in the Parliament of Canada such amendments to legislation as are necessary to ensure that corporate executives and directors are held accountable for workplace study.
The only disagreement I have with this is the call for more study. We do not need more study. We need legislation. That is why we intend to introduce a bill complementing the motion of my colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough which will amend the Criminal Code to make this law.
This is not the first time it has been raised. I quote from the Law Reform Commission of Canada back in 1976 which stated: “While the goals of many of our corporations, profit and growth, spur important advances in the technologies of production and—”