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With 43 years of police experience, Superintendent Ron Tavener learned long ago to expect the unexpected.
Then again, no two tragedies are ever quite the same, a fact underscored last Christmas Eve for the veteran Toronto police superintendent, when he received a call at home: Four men had fallen 13 storeys to their deaths, a fifth was badly injured and a sixth left unhurt but hanging from a lifeline when a scaffold broke beneath their feet.Migrant workers all, they were repairing concrete apartment balconies in the city’s northwest end, an area forested with aging high-rises filled with low-income and working-class tenants.
Wednesday, Supt. Tavener stood outside 23 Division, less than two kilometres from the Rexdale-area building, to announce that three men now face criminal charges in the workers’ deaths.
The counts – four of criminal negligence causing death and one of criminal negligence causing bodily harm – are believed to constitute the first prosecution in Ontario under a six-year-old Criminal Code provision known as C-45, a measure to penalize unsafe employers.
“When I got on scene, the deceased were still laying there [and] the scaffolding was swinging from the building,” said Supt. Tavener, who was getting ready for a family Christmas gathering when his phone rang. “It was just a sad, sad situation all the way around.”
The three accused, Vadim Kazenelson, 35, of Gormley, Ont., Joel Swartz, 51, of Toronto, and Benny Saigh, 52, of Toronto, all of Metron Construction Corp., face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The three, who turned themselves in Wednesday morning, were free on bail by early afternoon after a brief court appearance.
Metron, along with scaffolding provider Swing N Scaff, of Ottawa, had previously been charged under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The two companies also face a civil suit launched by the injured survivor, Dilshod Marupov, whose legs were crushed and his spine broken when he fell.
“Every day pain,” Mr. Marupov, an Uzbek migrant who knows very little English, said Wednesday.
When the scaffold gave way, he held on briefly, then fell. His colleagues, Aleksey Blumberg and Alexander Bondorev, both from Ukraine, and Vladimir Korostin and Fayzullo Fazilov of Uzbekistan, were killed.
The deaths sent a chill through Toronto’s underground labour economy in which thousands of undocumented foreign workers toil, often in unsafe conditions, unaware of their rights and reluctant to speak up for fear of deportation. The Ontario government launched a review of safety in the underground economy in the wake of the incident.
Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, said Wednesday’s laying of criminal charges signalled that worker safety is finally getting the consideration it deserves.
“I think this will be the case that sends a signal that the police, the Ministry of Labour and the Ontario Federation of Labour are serious about stopping deaths in the workplace,” he said.
Supt. Tavener said worker safety is something everyone needs to think about, as he has certainly done since Christmas.
“I don’t think you ever get over the fact, especially when there are four people dead at a scene,” he said. “It’s one of those things that resonates in your mind forever.”
Source: The Globe Mail (Canada)
Then again, no two tragedies are ever quite the same, a fact underscored last Christmas Eve for the veteran Toronto police superintendent, when he received a call at home: Four men had fallen 13 storeys to their deaths, a fifth was badly injured and a sixth left unhurt but hanging from a lifeline when a scaffold broke beneath their feet.Migrant workers all, they were repairing concrete apartment balconies in the city’s northwest end, an area forested with aging high-rises filled with low-income and working-class tenants.
Wednesday, Supt. Tavener stood outside 23 Division, less than two kilometres from the Rexdale-area building, to announce that three men now face criminal charges in the workers’ deaths.
The counts – four of criminal negligence causing death and one of criminal negligence causing bodily harm – are believed to constitute the first prosecution in Ontario under a six-year-old Criminal Code provision known as C-45, a measure to penalize unsafe employers.
“When I got on scene, the deceased were still laying there [and] the scaffolding was swinging from the building,” said Supt. Tavener, who was getting ready for a family Christmas gathering when his phone rang. “It was just a sad, sad situation all the way around.”
The three accused, Vadim Kazenelson, 35, of Gormley, Ont., Joel Swartz, 51, of Toronto, and Benny Saigh, 52, of Toronto, all of Metron Construction Corp., face up to 20 years in prison if convicted. The three, who turned themselves in Wednesday morning, were free on bail by early afternoon after a brief court appearance.
Metron, along with scaffolding provider Swing N Scaff, of Ottawa, had previously been charged under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The two companies also face a civil suit launched by the injured survivor, Dilshod Marupov, whose legs were crushed and his spine broken when he fell.
“Every day pain,” Mr. Marupov, an Uzbek migrant who knows very little English, said Wednesday.
When the scaffold gave way, he held on briefly, then fell. His colleagues, Aleksey Blumberg and Alexander Bondorev, both from Ukraine, and Vladimir Korostin and Fayzullo Fazilov of Uzbekistan, were killed.
The deaths sent a chill through Toronto’s underground labour economy in which thousands of undocumented foreign workers toil, often in unsafe conditions, unaware of their rights and reluctant to speak up for fear of deportation. The Ontario government launched a review of safety in the underground economy in the wake of the incident.
Sid Ryan, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour, said Wednesday’s laying of criminal charges signalled that worker safety is finally getting the consideration it deserves.
“I think this will be the case that sends a signal that the police, the Ministry of Labour and the Ontario Federation of Labour are serious about stopping deaths in the workplace,” he said.
Supt. Tavener said worker safety is something everyone needs to think about, as he has certainly done since Christmas.
“I don’t think you ever get over the fact, especially when there are four people dead at a scene,” he said. “It’s one of those things that resonates in your mind forever.”
Source: The Globe Mail (Canada)