A waste disposal company in Norfolk County, Ont., has pleaded guilty to contravening the Occupational Health and Safety Act and agreed to pay a fine in relation to a worker’s death in April 2022.
Norfolk Disposal Services Limited agreed it failed to provide information, instruction and supervision to a worker in order to protect them. Court heard that a lack of safety training contributed to JR Richard, a married father of three, being killed after he was ejected from a waste collection truck he was driving.
Richard’s family also gave emotional victim impact statements that were read into the court record.
In a September news release, Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development said the company “failed to provide information, instruction and supervision to a worker to ensure they were able to operate the vehicle safely,” as required under the act.
In an email, Norfolk Disposal Services Limited declined to comment on the guilty finding. The Waterford-based company employs about 80 people. It operates a waste transfer facility, supplies waste bins to clients, and collects curbside waste in urban and rural parts of the county.
The company’s operations manager, Doug Gatward, confirmed its guilty plea at the August court hearing. CBC Hamilton listened to a recording of the proceeding.
The business’s lawyer and a lawyer for the Ministry of Labour, which investigates on-the-job deaths, presented Justice of the Peace Audrey Greene Summers with a joint submission. The submission included an agreed statement of facts, and recommended a fine of $160,000 plus a 25 per cent victim surcharge. The surcharge money will go to a provincial fund to assist victims of crime.
Court heard that on the morning of April 11, 2022, JR Richard was driving a truck to collect waste along a route in Norfolk County. Such trucks can be operated in a standing position from the right side of the vehicle, making it quicker for operators to enter and exit the vehicle while collecting waste from the curb. Richard was operating the vehicle in that position, the court heard.
The joint submission said some company drivers would operate the truck with a right-side door open, and not all wore seat belts because doing so made entering and exiting the vehicle take longer.
Worker died when vehicle tipped into ditch
Around 8 a.m. that April day, something happened and the truck veered out of the lane it was in and onto the shoulder. Then it crossed to the other side of the road and tipped into a ditch. Richard was thrown from the vehicle and died.
Ministry of Labour lawyer Judy Chan said it’s unclear why the truck crashed, but it is clear the waste disposal business had no system in place to ensure drivers were aware of how to safely operate the vehicles in the right-side-stand position.
Reading the agreed statement of facts, Chan said workers “were not consistently trained to wear seat belts or to close the right side door while operating the waste collection vehicles,” nor were they advised that the operators’ manual for company trucks states the vehicle should only be operated from the ride-side position when a seat belt is used.
At the time of Richard’s death, Norfolk Disposal Services trained new hires on defensive driving techniques and paired new hires with experienced drivers to job shadow for two to three weeks. There was no checklist to confirm whether drivers met specific standards.
Training procedure was inconsistent, Chan said, and could have resulted in new employees learning from senior operators who had been insufficiently trained themselves.
Failing to provide information, instruction and supervision to Richard in order to ensure he could safely operate the vehicle is contrary to the Occupational Health and Safety Act, the parties agreed.
Family tells court they miss Richard every day
An obituary for Richard posted on a Norfolk funeral home’s website describes him as a proud husband and father of three.
In her written victim impact statement, his daughter Emma said she “lost a piece of her heart” when her dad died and thinks about how he will never walk her down the aisle or meet his grandchildren.
“I’m angry that this all could have been prevented and I will spend the rest of my life grieving the loss of my father, longing to hear his voice or hug him ever again.”
Richard’s wife Zabrina read her own statement, saying she lost a part of herself when her “best friend of 22 years” died, leaving her a widow at 39.
“Every day there’s something that reminds me of JR or something I hear or experience, and I want to text him or call him to tell him about it, but I can’t. I still expect him to walk through the door and tell me about his day. I miss his smile, I miss his laugh, I miss everything.”
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Norfolk Disposal Services shared a message of condolences the day Richard died, saying he was an important part of their team. Richard had been working for the company as a fleet truck operator since 2020.
Since Richard’s death, Norfolk Disposal Services has improved its procedures, the court heard. Improvements include implementing a supervisor who oversees waste collection, enrolling operators in driver training, installing safety cameras and retraining drivers with respect to seatbelts.
The justice said these improvements were a mitigating factor in the sentence the company ultimately received, as was the guilty plea.
No fine could ever place a monetary value on Richard’s life, Chan said. Rather, fines are designed to deter businesses from allowing the circumstances that lead to deaths.
“No worker and no worker’s family should expect that the worker would leave for work in the morning and just never come home. It’s unimaginable.”