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Editorial: Get together on safety rules

Whether you are roofing a house in Colwood or felling trees on Haida Gwaii, you count on WorkSafe B.C. to make sure your job is as safe as possible.
Whether you are roofing a house in Colwood or felling trees on Haida Gwaii, you count on WorkSafe B.C. to make sure your job is as safe as possible. WorkSafe has to enforce safety regulations at more than 500,000 workplaces and bring people to book if they put others in danger by flouting the law.

Working people and employers all over B.C. need to know why the agency’s investigation of the Babine Forest Products mill explosion got a failing mark from Crown prosecutors.

Robert Luggi, Jr., 45, and Carl Charlie, 42, died on Jan. 20, 2012, when a flame or electrical arc ignited airborne sawdust in the mill in Burns Lake; 20 other people were injured. The importance of the WorkSafe investigation was hammered home three months later when a mill in Prince George blew up, killing two men and injuring 22 others.

WorkSafe’s Burns Lake report, released Thursday, found the blast was preventable and recommended four regulatory charges. However, the charges were not laid because Crown prosecutors found serious flaws in the way the evidence was gathered.

Last week, the Criminal Justice Branch said: “Based on the evidence that would likely be available for presentation by Crown counsel in court, the branch has concluded that there is no substantial likelihood of conviction for any of the regulatory offences recommended by WorkSafe B.C.”

No criminal charges. No workers’ compensation charges. No occupational health and safety charges.

Chief among the branch’s concerns were that WorkSafe didn’t get search warrants and didn’t warn witnesses of their charter rights. That left important evidence inadmissible in court.

At first glance, it seems that WorkSafe bungled the investigation and ignored basic procedures, but things are not so straightforward.

WorkSafe says it has been using the same investigative procedures for 20 years, and the Crown has never balked at accepting the evidence it gathered. Between 1996 and 2010, prosecutors approved charges in 31 cases and secured convictions in 24 of them.

The case law cited in rejecting the Babine charges is more than 10 years old, but the Criminal Justice Branch has not raised it as an issue until now, a WorkSafe official said.

It’s clear that the Criminal Justice Branch and WorkSafe need to get on the same page. WorkSafe, formerly known as the Workers’ Compensation Board, is responsible for helping injured workers, but it also enforces safety regulations. It investigates workplace accidents, and even when there hasn’t been an accident, its inspectors can enter a workplace at any time without a warrant.

In the wake of this case, it will get warrants for investigations, starting next month. But WorkSafe officials will have to talk to the Crown prosecutors to determine on which cases and at what point they should seek warrants.

If Crown prosecutors and WorkSafe aren’t communicating, if investigators don’t understand the rules of evidence, the government needs to fix the problem.

Administrative penalties are still possible in the Burns Lake incident. Next month, WorkSafe will hand the Criminal Justice Branch its report on the Prince George blast, and there is hope it has learned from Burns Lake.

In all these investigations, the main job is to ensure the accident isn’t repeated, to find safety problems that can be fixed at the accident site or at other workplaces. Unusually flammable sawdust from pine-beetle-killed trees has been blamed in both explosions, so something has been learned that could save other lives.

Few industrial accidents are acts of God. Most happen because of human mistakes. Some happen, however, because someone broke the laws that are written to keep workers safe.

When that happens, investigators and prosecutors must make sure those people are held to account.