Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support Bill C-284 put forward by my colleague, the member for Churchill, an act to amend the Criminal Code of Canada concerning offences by corporations, directors and officers.
I also wish to acknowledge the great work done on this issue by my leader, the member for Halifax, and by the member for Pictou--Antigonish--Guysborough.
This bill has been a long time coming before parliament and it has been known by many names: the corporate responsibility act; the workplace safety act; the corporate manslaughter act; and the corporate killing act. However, most people still call it by its original name, the Westray act.
People call this the Westray act in reference to the tragic Westray mine disaster in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. On that day in 1992, 26 miners died when a methane gas explosion tore through the Westray mine. Those 26 deaths, like so many deaths and injuries that occur in the workplace, could have been prevented were it not for the company management practices that deliberately and systematically refused to comply with health and safety regulations.
Mr. Justice Richard's inquest into the Westray mine disaster was very clear on this point: it was the wilful decision of the mine's manager to ignore and indeed encourage violations of safety regulations that led to the fatal gas explosion.
The miners tried to complain about the unsafe working conditions, but their complaints were ignored and they were threatened with dismissal unless they kept quiet.
I believe that it is time that we in this House finally complete our criminal law by making it a criminal offence for an employer or a manager to wilfully violate reasonable standards of conduct of safety or safety of workers in their care thus causing an employee's death.
It has always struck me as strange that in Canada people are allowed under the law to wilfully create the conditions that causes someone's death because of their status as a boss, director or manager. The current criminal code lets them escape responsibility for the safety of their employees. Why is that?
If we are negligent about the safety of our neighbour and cause their death we would be guilty of manslaughter. If we killed someone by driving drunk, the penalties are justifiably severe. If we cause death as a caregiver in a hospital we may be charged with murder. However, if a manager of a mine, who knows the mine is unsafe and keeps making decisions that keep it unsafe, sends employees into those unsafe conditions and 26 people die, no criminal liability exists in Canada. That is shocking.
Let us not be coy here. That is what is allowed under the law right now.
The case that is used most often when discussing this is the Westray explosion. However the Westray disaster is only the tip of the iceberg in Canada.
Every day Canadians are injured or killed on the job. Every day these accidents happen because the employer refuses to create a workplace that is safe. Every day Canadians are killed because the boss will not pay an extra buck to make sure that safety is in place. Every day our criminal code lets this happen without punishment. Our job as parliamentarians is to stop this fundamental injustice.
I would like to take a minute to pay tribute to an individual who spent most of his life fighting for safe workplaces for working men and women. I am referring to former Canada Labour Congress vice president, Dick Martin, who passed away last week.
Dick started fighting for the rights of workers as a steelworker working for Inco in northern Manitoba. He fought tirelessly for better health and safety. He saw how many of his co-workers at Inco were injured through company or supervisory neglect. He was angry about the fact that thousands of workers were being injured or killed on the job and our nation failed to mourn or act.
Dick was instrumental in having this place declare April 28 as the national day of mourning for Canadians who have died at work. I am so happy that Dick was able to see us mourn for these unnecessary deaths. However I am sad that Dick is not here today to see us pass this bill, a bill that would act to prevent unnecessary workplace death. Dick would be here lobbying like crazy to see this one through.
It is difficult for me to understand why some are opposing the bill. After all it does have a noble and practical objective. Some oppose it because they believe there are jurisdictional problems. To them I say, pass the bill at second reading and we will fix any jurisdictional problems at committee. That is why we have a clause by clause process to look at legislation and to tighten up the technical details.
I wonder if that is the real reason. I would hate to think that anyone in this place would believe that a corporation or a boss should be above the law simply because of status. I hope that all members would condemn that notion.
I have heard from some who oppose the legislation. They believe workers in Canada are protected from dangerous workplaces and predatory actions from bosses because they can always refuse to work. That argument is basically that it is the victim's fault. That argument is not only immoral and offensive, it is also inaccurate.
If we look at what happened in Stellarton, the Westray example clearly shows that the argument is inaccurate. Westray mine was part of the Foord coal seam, a geological structure eloquently called a spider web of coal by Westray survivor Shaun Comish in his book A Miner's Story . As Sean pointed out, the Foord coal seam had already claimed the lives of 244 miners before the explosion in 1992.
Everyone, including the managers, knew that this seam was unstable with constant cave-ins, heavy build-up of explosive coal dust and very prone to methane build-ups. It was a disaster waiting to happen. However, to cut costs and to maximize profits, the safety of the miners was willingly compromised by the company and 26 miners were added to the list of victims at the Foord coal seam.
Why did they still go down in the hole when they knew it was unsafe? It is simple. They had to eat. They had to support their families. They had to pay their bills. That is what working people of Canada have always done. Even when they know their lives are in danger, they have worked.
Before I became a member of parliament, I was a playwright and I had the honour of writing a play called The Glace Bay Miners' Museum based on a story by a writer named Sheldon Currie. It is the story of a young woman who sees her father and brother, then later on her husband and her other brother die in the Glace Bay mines.
It is a wonderful story but much of it is this argument that goes on between two brothers, one named Neil. Neil believed that real men worked above the ground and were farmers or fishermen or played bagpipes. Real men would not crawl in the earth like worms.
The other brother believed instead that real men worked under the ground. He joined the union and worked for better health and safety conditions. He fought for better hours and better pay and to hold management accountable and make it pay for part of the risk that they were taking underground.
At the end of the story both went down in the mine and both were killed at the exact same instant. It is a very sad story, but it is more than just a story.
Thousands of people in Canada do very dangerous work because of necessity. They also do it because they bring massive resources to the surface or from the waters.
Yesterday there was a huge storm in Atlantic Canada. Meteorologists called it a perfect storm. Again it is one of those situations where workers find themselves in the middle of very dangerous situations. In that case they are the masters of their own fortune in that it is their boats and their gear. That is not the case when working for a mine. People are very dependent on management for their safety.
Parliament has a role to play right now and right here to ensure we protect the health and safety of our workers by making sure managers do not escape criminal liability for their actions. Make no mistake, by allowing corporations not to be responsible for killing their workers, we let those 26 miners to die.
In memory of these men and their families, we have the opportunity to correct this situation. We can make corporate directors, managers and supervisors know that they have a legal responsibility not to ignore safety for profit.
We can honour their memory by passing the bill. In doing so we honour the memory of John Bates; Larry Bell; Bennie Benoit, a grandfather; Wayne Conway; Ferris Dewan; Adonis Dollimont; Robert Doyle, only 22 years old; Remi Drolet; Roy Feltmate; Charles Fraser; Myles “Sparkie” Gillis; John Halloran; Randolph House; T.J. Jahn; Laurence James; Eugene Johnson; Stephen Lilley; Michael MacKay; Angus MacNeil; Glenn Martin; Harry McCallum; Eric McIsaac; George Munroe; Danny Poplar; Romeo Short; and Peter Vickers.
Their lives were cut short. They were fathers, grandfathers, husbands, lovers, brothers and friends. They were workers who died in a mine that management knew was unsafe. They are victims and the law failed them. Let us fix the law in their memory.