Honouring the memory of the 26 workers killed on this day 20 years ago

Today marks the 20^th anniversary of the Westray mine disaster that killed 26 workers in Nova Scotia. The public inquiry into the Westray story called the deaths “predictable” and concluded management, “starting with the Chief Executive Officer,” had failed in its responsibility to design and operate a safe mine. It recommended federal legislation “to ensure that corporate executives and directors are held properly accountable for workplace safety.”

It was these 26 deaths and that recommendation that led to Parliament unanimously passing in 2003 what has come to be known as the “Westray Bill.” Under that law, employers responsible for workplace deaths can face criminal charges, and if convicted, can be sentenced to time in prison.  

Unfortunately eight years later, despite thousands more workplace deaths, only a handful of criminal prosecutions have proceeded in Canada; no charges have been laid in Manitoba to date. Workplace safety activists who worked so hard lobbying for passage of the Westray Bill are frustrated and demoralized. Parliament was clear that the criminal code should be used to hold employers accountable for ensuring safe and healthy working conditions for workers they employ. Yet there has been virtually no enforcement.

To find out why, the Canadian Labour Congress organized a Westray bill symposium last fall, bringing together police, prosecutors, workplace safety regulators and health and safety activists. At the symposium it quickly became clear that, without the political will to enforce it, the Westray law would remain a largely unenforced “paper tiger.” Participants identified a number of barriers to enforcing the Westray law:

• Police indicated that criminal investigation of workplace deaths was part of neither their training nor their operating protocols. They cited lack of access to specialized expertise about workplace safety. They said evidence collected by government regulators without a warrant may not be admissible in criminal prosecutions.
• Not all prosecutors have closely followed implementation of the Westray law and cases to date.
• Health and safety regulators indicated their investigative procedures were oriented towards gathering evidence required for criminal prosecutions.

Everyone in attendance agreed that proper enforcement of the Westray law will require a deliberate and collaborative effort on the part of everyone present. Investigative procedures for police and regulators need to be revised. Police, prosecutors and regulators need to be trained or updated on the latest developments. Provincial officials need to show leadership by bringing all these players together to work through these challenges.

Families of workers who fall victim to workplace tragedies deserve to know that these deaths are all investigated through the lens of the Westray law. Employers need to know that there will be tough criminal consequences if they act irresponsibly with the health and safety or workers they employ. This is how we can truly honour the memory of the 26 workers killed 20 years ago.

Exaggerating the Size of Manitoba’s Public Sector

As Manitoba’s provincial budget gets closer, we have heard repeatedly from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation the claim that Manitoba has a “bloated” public sector. The claim has been based on a recently published piece of propaganda from the Frontier Centre: “The Size and Cost of Manitoba’s PublicSector.”

The lead claim from this document is that Manitoba has a far higher proportion of its jobs in the public sector than other provinces: “26% of jobs in Manitoba are in the civilian public sector (all levels of government). In the country as a whole, just 20% of jobs are in the civilian public sector.”

That sounds like a big gap, doesn’t it?

However, if you look more closely at the data, you quickly find that the “analysis” is not comparing apples to apples. To achieve the 26% and 20% figures the report includes employment at crown corporations and other government business enterprises. This has the effect of exaggerating public sector employment for provinces that have more public ownership and less privatization. For example, Manitoba’s public sector employment figure includes all the staff at MPI, one of Manitoba’s larger employers, whereas (most) provinces that have private auto insurance will have no public sector workers for this service.

To get a fair, apples-to-apples comparison of public sector employment rates, you need to look at public sector workers without including workers at crown corporations. If you do that, you find that Manitoba has 20% of its total employment in the civilian public sector, compared to 19% for Canada as a whole (Statistics Canada, CANSIM Tables 183-0002 and 383-0009).

That’s not much of a gap. What’s bloated is the claim that Manitoba’s public sector is too large.

Federal Budget Drops the Ball on Jobs

The Federal budget finally appeared – two days before the end of the Federal Government’s fiscal year.   I guess they wanted to put off the bad news for as long as possible.

We were looking for a budget that emphasizes job creation and the needs of working families: a budget that would support the fragile economic recovery by continuing with job-creating stimulus investments in infrastructure; a budget that doesn’t put the economic recovery at risk by making deep depending cuts to services; and a budget that protects the services that working families rely on.

But, what did we get?

Instead we got a budget that makes deep cuts to the front-line services that working families count on.  It closes every youth jobs centre in Canada (the $6.5 million savings are about half the $12 million that the Harper government is spending to advertise this budget); it will cut the number of centres that process Employment Insurance claims from 120 to 20; and within 5 years, front-line health care will begin to suffer from the budget’s commitment to slash federal health transfers to the provinces.

How will this budget impact working families? 

This budget means the middle class will continue to shrink as almost 20,000 good, family-supporting jobs are cut.  It will hurt the middle class that has been the engine of our economic prosperity since the Second World War. 

This budget means working families will be more on their own in saving for retirement.  People 53 and younger will have to wait two more years before they become eligible for Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Federal civil servants will have to make up for cuts to their pensions.

The budget also means more injuries in federally regulated workplaces.  The Harper government has already cut the number of inspectors who enforce workplace health and safety rules by 15%.  That’s why federally regulated workpalces are the only workplaces in Canada where the average injury rate is actually getting worse.  This will just get worse with federal job cuts.

Harper the Vindictive reappeared in this budget.  During the last election Conservatives insisted they had no plans to cut the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s budget.  But a media outlet that actually does its job and looks beyond the government news release and points out the reality of what’s going on is just too tempting a target for Conservative cuts.  There’s an easy $115 million to pluck and the bonus for Harper is that it will silence one of the few reliable media voices that doesn’t swallow Harper’s guff holus bolus.

I’m glad to see there are going to be new investments in running water and education for First Nations communities.  That’s a good step forward but it’s not nearly enough.

Clearly the deficit needs to be addressed, but let’s be sensible about it.  The approach in this budget could actually make it worse. As we have seen in recent months, the global economic recovery is very fragile and leading economists have cautioned Canada not to put it at risk by making deep cuts in federal spending.   Just look at Europe where country after country is slipping back into recession because they took their foot off the stimulus pedal too soon.

The best way to restore balance is to get Canadians working again. When the economy is operating on all cylinders, tax revenues go up and spending on services comes down. That’s how you get back to balance.

Deep cuts will only hurt the recovery and reinforce the economic pressures that caused the deficit in the first place.

Our top priority should be economic recovery and getting Canadians back to work. With the global economic recovery at risk I would have expected a renewal of the federal stimulus program to invest in job creating infrastructure projects.

Instead of deep cuts to front-line services, I would have closed tax loopholes and breaks for corporations and high-income Canadians.   When Canada’s highest paid CEOs cash in stock options, they should be taxed at the same rate that other working Canadians are taxed. This loophole costs the federal government $750 million/year. We can’t afford that anymore and it’s not fair.

We need to put a stop to Canada’s failed corporate tax cut experiment. Canada’s corporate tax rate is now far below the US rate, yet instead of reinvesting their tax savings into job creating investments, Canadian corporations have stockpiled more than $500 billion in cash. We could support public services and stay competitive by letting the corporate tax rate rise to at least the US rate.

Canada needed a budget that prioritizes jobs and services for working families. Instead we got front-line service cuts and layoffs that will put the fragile economic recovery at risk.