Madam Speaker, in the spirit of co-operation shown in the House in recent days, I had no problem with the interruption.
As I was saying, what did not die, however, was the urgency of this issue and the determination of those of us who believe passionately in workplace safety to close this huge loophole in the criminal code. That is why, following the election, the hon. member for Halifax resubmitted her bill and I introduced my own version of it as well with higher fines.
The issue is very important to me personally and to my constituents in the Churchill riding where many people are employed in the heavy resource industries like mining and forestry, where health and safety is literally a matter of life and death.
Injury and death on the job is an ongoing problem in Canada. The statistics are shocking. On an average workday, three Canadians are killed on the job. That is three fathers or mothers, husbands or wives, sons or daughters, who do not come home to their loved ones. On top of those deaths, a Canadian gets injured on the job an average of every nine seconds. That means that in 15 minutes 100 Canadians are injured at work. It all adds up to over a million workplace injuries a year. It is staggering.
Of course not all or even most of these deaths and injuries are necessarily the result of misconduct by management, like they were in the case of the Westray mine. I do not mean to suggest that every time a worker gets killed or injured on the job the boss should face criminal charges. The bill is only meant to address those cases where an employer or manager wilfully violates reasonable standards of conduct and safety.
If we think these sorts of infractions are rare, that is not the case. Unfortunately there is an ever growing list of deaths and injuries on the job that have happened even since the Westray disaster and which negligent or irresponsible management practices have been found to have caused. As recently as last month in Trail, British Columbia it was learned that officials at Teck Cominco Metals Limited knew that conditions in their smelter were exposing their workers to toxic levels of the chemical thallium, but did not tell anyone and allowed people to continue working in those conditions. They only admitted there was a problem after people started getting ill. Thallium was used as rat poison until it was banned 20 years ago. It is absorbed through the skin and causes nerve damage, kidney damage and blindness.
Responsible managers would have pulled their employees out of the situation as soon as they learned there was a problem. It is impossible to know for sure how many people are now facing severe long term health problems because of gross misconduct by this company.
Another example I want to touch on happened earlier this year in Nova Scotia. This was another tragic case and I think it really makes the point as to why the bill is so important. Truck driver Allan MacLean of Thorburn, Nova Scotia was killed after the brakes on his rig gave out. An inquest found that his managers knew that the vehicle needed brake work, but sent Mr. MacLean out on the road in it anyway. If I knew that my car had brake problems but did not say anything and knowingly let my neighbour drive it who then died because of the brakes giving out, I would be guilty of manslaughter. However, because this man was at work and it was his boss who sent him out in a truck with bad brakes, it was not manslaughter; it was a health and safety violation. Instead of the responsible individual going to jail, the company got a $50,000 fine.
Is that what a man's life is worth? I do not think so. That is why we need the bill, to move this from the realm of health and safety law to criminal law, because when one knowingly and recklessly endangers another person's life, it should be a crime.
I could point to more examples, but the time is short. I would like to acknowledge and thank the injured workers, their families and the families of the workers who were killed on the job who have come here to the House of Commons to watch the debate from the gallery and are representing the thousands of injured workers and others from across the country who have been calling for the changes contained in the bill. Each of them has a story of their own, a personal reason why they support the bill. It is important that we as parliamentarians, as legislators of this land, listen to them and ensure that in the future justice is served.
I have been speaking about the bill to a number of members of parliament from all parties. I am encouraged to see the support in principle that the bill received in the last parliament when we passed Motion No. 79 and when the justice committee unanimously endorsed the bill in principle. That support still seems to be there.
I also recognize that a few members of parliament have told me that they support the bill in principle, but they have expressed technical concerns about some specific aspects of it. I would like to assure all hon. members that I am open to whatever amendments they may wish to propose at the justice committee or at report stage to improve the bill.
This legislation has been a cross-partisan effort from the beginning. I know that the NDP justice critic, the hon. member for Winnipeg--Transcona, and I are both eager to work closely in committee with members from the government and all political parties to improve the bill where it can be improved.
I would also like to remind those hon. members who have said they support the principle of the bill but have legitimate technical concerns that it is at second reading of a bill that we vote in principle. I ask all members of the House to show their support in principle by supporting the bill at second reading so that we can work together at the committee stage in a spirit of non-partisanship to make this the best piece of legislation it can possibly be.
Injured workers and their families, the families of workers who were killed, the families of the Westray victims and all Canadians who worry about their safety at work deserve no less from us than for us to put aside our partisan differences and make a real effort to work together on this fundamentally important bill.
I want to point out that there are those who feel that the aspect of a corporate manslaughter bill or of holding corporations responsible for manslaughter or murder is something new and strange. I am pleased to say that it is not just Canada that is looking at this issue and I will comment on a couple of instances.
First, the United Kingdom has actually worked on a corporate homicide act. Its act came about as a result of 400 people being injured and 31 being killed in a train crash. It was found that the corporation was responsible. Therefore a corporate homicide act was brought forth within the U.K.
Not along the line of workers being killed but along the lines of corporate manslaughter and corporate murder, many of us will remember the ValuJet crash in Florida in 1999 in which 110 passengers were killed. The company that had been putting hazardous goods on the plane was held responsible. Initially the workers who were told by their managers to put the hazardous goods on the plane were to be charged with the murders.
I have followed this over the last couple of years and I was pleased to find that the workers were not held accountable, but what is taking place in the state of Florida is that it is proceeding with murder and manslaughter charges against the corporation for the actions it took that caused those deaths.
Once again, corporate manslaughter is not something that is new to Canada. I am happy to say it is something that countries are looking at because it is not acceptable that corporations, in the name of making profit, can put the lives of workers or the public at risk.
As I said during my speech there was limited time so I did not want to get into all the instances of different cases that had happened, but in the province of Ontario there was one situation where a man was crushed by a machine in his workplace. I want to point out what his wife, Tammy Dann, had to say:
It's murder. (The company) knew it wasn't safe and they get away with a fine.
It is murder. It is murder when someone's life is knowingly put at risk. We accept in our country that managers and directors in workplaces have control over the workers to the point that in sexual harassment cases we hold them seriously accountable because the workers are controlled by those bosses. They are controlled because they need that income to support their families or controlled because often those people are in a vulnerable position. That is the situation in so many workplaces.
We often see situations where we expect a worker to go out and do a worker's job. The bottom line is that they are vulnerable. They are vulnerable to the directions of managers and directors. If their lives are put at risk or lost, those managers and directors, if they act irresponsibly, should be held accountable.
Justice Richard's Westray mine public inquiry report was entitled “A Predictable Path to Disaster”. This was no little two day inquiry into what happened. This was a long drawn out inquiry to sort out exactly what happened. It was found that our criminal justice system was lacking. It should not be up to provincial workplace health and safety laws. It should be up to the Parliament of Canada to bring forth criminal laws so that murderers and persons who commit manslaughter in the workplace are held accountable.