Nora Loreto @NoLore April 8, 2024:
Well, this is fucking dystopian.
Syncrude has just been fined $390,000 for the death of a worker on June 6 2021. That is good.
But this is weird af — the money is going to three orgs as donations …
The DJL School of Engineering and Risk Management (worst name), the UA Geotech Centre and the Alberta Municipal Health and Safety Association.
Imagine funding public services directly when a company kills a worker?!
This is being called a “creative” sentence.
The worker died by downing in an excavator. And now students will have an extra 4 TAs.
Syncrude fined $390,000 by Alberta court after excavator operator drowned on the job April 12, 2024, by OHS Canada
Syncrude Canada has been fined $390,000 after one of its workers was killed near Fort McKay, Alta., in 2021.
A worker was operating an excavator to build a berm when the bank the excavator was on slumped into water. The excavator cab became submerged and the worker drowned.
Creative sentence
Under a creative sentence, the company will pay $390,000 to the David and Joan Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management, the UAlberta Geotechnical Centre and the Alberta Municipal Health and Safety Association.
The funds will be used to develop an employer 
Best Practices are Voluntary! Just how law-violating, worker-killing oil and gas industry companies love their self regulation “best!”best-practice guide and field-ready mobile app for trenching, excavation and adjacent work. These will provide real-time training, work planning and decision support to enhance safe work practices.
The OHS Act provides a creative sentence option in which funds that would otherwise be paid as fines are directed to an organization or project, to improve or promote workplace health and safety.Bullshit. It’s so that the criminal corporations can boast about their “donations” and kindness in community, while they rape out billions of dollars destroying earth’s livability and contaminating groundwater everywhere.
Four other charges droppedOf course they were. Made a deal with Satan, I bet.
Alberta’s OHS laws set basic health and safety rules for the province’s workplaces. They provide guidance for employers to help them ensure their workplaces are as healthy and safe as possible while providing rights and protections for companies, CEOs and upper managementworkers. Charges under OHS laws may but usually are notbe laid when failing to follow the rules results in a workplace fatality or serious injury.
On April 4 in the Fort McMurray Court of Justice, Syncrude Canada Ltd. pleaded guilty to one charge under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHS Act) for failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker. Four other charges under OHS legislation were withdrawn.
@desneiges987:
If it’s a “donation” then isn’t it a tax write off?
@moirarvane:
No, there’s a CRA decision that prevents these fines from being treated as charitable donations.
Syncrude to pay $390K penalty, pleads guilty to safety violation, after oilsands worker death in 2021, Worker fatally injured while operating excavator at Aurora mine site north of Fort McMurray by CBC News, Apr 08, 2024
Oilsands operator Syncrude Canada Ltd. has pleaded guilty to a safety violation in the 2021 death of a worker and has been ordered to pay a $390,000 penalty.
Syncrude — which is an oilsands joint venture majority-owned by Suncor Energy Inc. — pleaded guilty on April 4 in a Fort McMurray court to one charge under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, for failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker.
The Syncrude employee was killed on June 6, 2021, at the Aurora mine site 70 kilometres north of Fort McMurray.
The worker was operating an excavator to build a berm when the bank slumped into the fresh water, Occupational Health and Safety said in a statement released Monday. The cab of the excavator was fully submerged and the worker drowned.
Syncrude pleaded guilty for failure to ensure the health and safety of a worker by permitting the worker to operate a John Deere excavator on a ramp with an over-steepened slope, OHS said.
Additional charges withdrawn
Four other charges under OHS legislation were withdrawn.
Alberta’s OHS legislation allows the court to apply what is known as a “creative sentence option,” where funds that would otherwise be paid as fines are diverted to organizations that promote occupational health and safety.
In this case, Syncrude will pay $390,000 to the David and Joan Lynch School of Engineering Safety and Risk Management, the UAlberta Geotechnical Centre and the Alberta Municipal Health and Safety Association for the purpose of developing an employer best-practice guide and field-ready mobile app for trenching, excavation and adjacent work.
With files from The Canadian Press
Mary Hamilton:
April 8, 2024
What about the worker’s family? Did Syncrude have to pay them anything for this egregious breach of safe working conditions?
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