By paNOW Staff

Guilty plea from PotashCorp in workplace fatality

Oct 21, 2014 | 4:32 PM

PotashCorp of Saskatchewan has been fined $280,000 for failing to provide a safe working environment after a young mine worker died in 2012.
 
The company pleaded guilty to one count of the Occupational Health and Safety charge in Saskatoon Provincial Court on Tuesday.
 
On June 25, 2012, Christopher Reid, 28, was working underground as a backup operator at the Allan potash mine east of Saskatoon. Court heard he was trapped and run over by a mineveyor, a moveable belt that weighed approximately four tonnes, and died from blunt force trauma to the trunk of his body.
 
President of United Steelworkers Union Local 7689, Ron St. Pierre, said the mineveyor wasn’t steering in the right direction, and because Reid was a new employee he tried to prevent it from hitting the wall.
 
“The unfortunate part of it … is the safety devices that would have prevented the accident had been removed,” he said outside court, wiping tears from his eyes.
 
Emergency remote buttons used to stop the equipment from moving were available, but weren’t being used according to Crown prosecutor Michael Segu.
 
“Remote stops may have reduced this from fatality to injury,” Segu told the court.
 
Since Reid’s death, PotashCorp has implemented new safety procedures including better warning systems and providing wireless remote controls that let operators keep a safe distance from mineveyors. The company is still in the process of rolling that technology out at all its mines, according to president of PCS Potash, Mark Fracchia.
 
“There’s nothing we can say or do that can ever bring Mr. Reid back, and I think that’s the tragic side of these events,” Fracchia said.
 
Through a victim impact statement read out by the Crown, spouse Kali Grainger described how their daughter was only four months old when Reid died. She said Reid was a “hands-on father” and that her favorite thing to do was watch the two of them together.
 
“I lost my best friend, my confidante, my rock,” she wrote, adding Reid was supposed to “go to work and come home like every other day.”
 
Reid’s mother, Beverley Brassard, said she’s happy PotashCorp accepted the blame and adopted new safety precautions.
 
“Because it was a preventable accident and my son would be here if they would have put those precautions in place before,” she said outside court.
 
Reid had been working at the mine for less than six months when he died.

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