The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Legislation must be enacted to compel companies to implement recommendations from coroners’ inquests, otherwise there is no point in holding them, says a woman whose husband was killed on the job in 2006.
Faye Campeau shared how her husband, Raymond, 47, was killed May 25, just hours after they had spoken on the phone and said they loved each other, with a group whose mandate is to make Ontario mines safer.
Campeau spoke Wednesday evening to a second session of public consultations being heard by the advisory group of the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review. Campeau’s was one of about 10 presentations made to the group, most of them on the internal responsibility system, employee training and the merits of the review itself.
Campeau represented the lobby group MINES (Mining Inquiry Needs Everyone’s Support), which campaigned for a full-blown inquiry into mining practices in Ontario after the June 2011 deaths of two men at Vale’s Stobie Mine. Campeau’s husband was a contractor working for Dynatec who was killed after the jumbo drill he was operating came loose.
The inquest into his death produced 16 recommendations, many of which have never been acted upon.
Dissolving into tears when she described seeing her husband lying on a stretcher, his arm hanging out of a body bag, Campeau said Raymond died a horrific, needless and painful death.
A member of the review advisory panel, Wendy Fram, who has observer status, dabbed tears from her eyes when Campeau broke down while telling her story.
Fram’s son, Jordan, 26, and Jason Chenier, 35, were killed at Stobie Mine after being overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck. An exhaustive investigation by United Steelworkers produced a number of recommendations, one of them the call for an inquiry.
The pain of her husband’s death was excruciating, Campeau told the advisory group and an audience of about 10 people at the evening consultation.
“I needed to know what happened. How did the accident happen? When did it happen? Where did it happen? What materials, machines, equipment and conditions were involved? Why did it occur?”
Two weeks later, one of the police officers investigating her husband’s death came to her home and told her the company her husband worked for was blaming him for his death.
That almost drove her “off the edge,” she said.
It was at the inquest she learned how her husband died and where a recommendation was made regarding the installation of proper engineered tie-offs for jumbo drills, something that wasn’t in place and led to her husband’s death.
But “coroner’s inquest recommendations are nothing more than just recommendations,” said Campeau. “The law does not require employers to implement recommendations. The issue is companies are not obligated to answer or implement recommendations from coroners’ inquests and this is what needs to be changed. Otherwise what’s the purpose of the coroner’s inquest?”
George Gritziotis, chief prevention officer for the Province of Ontario and chair of the review, said the advisory group is looking at results of past coroners’ inquests and the recommendations they produced.
The group is looking at trends, “things we can push forward through the review…that’s on our radar,” said Gritziotis.
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