In Brampton, the epi-center of New Canada, where large populations of New Canadians try to get ahead, open a little furniture store, and hire within their community, rest assured, Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety officials are ready to impose health and safety standards with a vengeance.
Ontario Minister of Labour v New Mex Canada Inc. (2019) 144 O.R.(3d) 673, was a case about the death of an epileptic employee who fell from a lift while getting product off of a shelf. For this accident, the Ontario Ministry of Labour sought and obtained a bankrupting $250,000 fine against the company and 25 days in jail against the two directors.
Ontario directors of small companies (where not every regulation and rule is followed exactly), take heed.
The outrageous stance of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety bureaucracy in this case is somewhat ironic. The victim was epileptic. The stance of the trial judge was to the effect that the employer should not have ‘assigned’ him to the lift, because the employer should have ‘known’ that an epileptic could fall.
Every employer in Ontario is aware that they cannot discriminate on the basis of disability. So here is a New Canadian employer, employing another New Canadian, disregarding his disability and treating him like everybody else. For that the directors get 25 days in jail when an unforeseen (but possibly foreseeable) accident occurred.
So what if the employer was colder, more calculating, less willing to give a disabled person a chance? Lets watch then as the Ontario Human Rights Commission attack the employer when the employer doesn’t hire because the guy is disabled. What is the ordinary small scale employer to do?
The truth is that there should have been a ‘proper’ lift, with ‘proper’ safety equipment. While all this is true, the real truth is that the engine of economic growth that makes Canada prosper is precisely in the New Mex’s of Brampton and precisely not in the Ministry of Labour of Ontario.
Maybe the Court of Appeal saw the equities and the economies. Former University of Ottawa law professor David Paciocco J.A. corrected the absurdity of the trial judge’s sentencing. Paciocco quashed the jail time and imposed a $15,000 fine against the directors and a $50,000 fine against the company.
