DSS171: Open Challenges From Babine Sawmill & Lakeland Mills Explosions with Steve Hunt

In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, Steve Hunt, Director of United Steelworkers District 3, returns to talk about the open challenges associated with the Babine Sawmill and Lakeland MIlls explosions. Last week, he spoke about the history of the United Steelworkers in Canada and the impact of the Westray coal mine explosion. Today, he goes over the impact that the Babine and Lakeland Mills incidents had on the USW.

Babine Sawmill and Lakeland Mills Explosions

Steve explained that when the Babine Sawmill exploded, his background was in the mining industry and he was not as familiar with wood dust explosions. He called several experts to determine what would cause a catastrophic explosion in a sawmill.

“We patiently waited to find out from the regulators what had happened after their investigation,” he recalled. “They had locked the site down. The RCMP was there because there were fatalities and serious injuries. We were barred from even engaging in any type of investigation. I sent some people out to interview survivors and really do some rudimentary stuff, and all we saw were pictures and the mill was completely gone.”

The USW was involved with a sawmill explosion because it represented the workers in the sawmill industry, but its merger with the old IWA – the Industrial Woodworkers of America- was relatively recent, and no one had been involved with a catastrophic explosion like Babine.

As soon as USW representatives received permission to access the site, Steve sent two people up there.

“They had just parked their cars to go in and look at the explosion site. [Then] they got a call that a second explosion had occurred three hours away.”

The Helps Report

“It was discovered that the Workers’ Compensation or WorkSafeBC really, really messed up their investigations,” Steve says. “I drew the connection to Westray, as it was, to me, almost a carbon copy of ineptitude and incompetence. All the things that led to the Westray explosion happened at these two mills. They did two of their biggest investigations in the history of WorkSafe BC and messed both of them up. They tainted evidence that they couldn’t even prosecute under their own regulations or act. There was no criminal prosecution because WorkSafe had messed it up so badly. So it was just screaming for intervention.”

When the NDP came to power, the USW continued to campaign for answers, so the provincial government commissioned a report on the tragedies. It was created by BC lawyer Lisa Helps and titled Crossing the Rubicon. When it came out in 2019, it contained multiple recommendations, one of which was that the police be responsible for investigating explosions that could have a criminal cause.

There are some recommendations that have not been acted on yet, such as training police officers to investigate serious and fatal workplace injuries, training the Crown Counsel and regulators to understand that explosion investigations should never be about ‘turf,’ and creation of an ‘Ombudsperson’ that workers could call if they were afraid to speak to their employers directly.

Steve pointed out that a senior manager at WorkSafeBC wrote a report that Lisa Helps reviewed. It stated, in part, that due to “the industry sensitivity at this time, we are not going to enforce the thrust of this regulation.” She noted in Crossing the Rubicon that industry sensitivity should never be factored into the safety of workers in British Columbia.

How Can Associations Support Worker Safety?

Steve says that his biggest fight has always been the right to refuse unsafe work. Due to what he calls ‘economic heroin,’ workers generally know what’s unsafe, but don’t resist due to factors like peer pressure.

“Any industry association or regulator should always emphasize that their workers have the right to refuse unsafe work. It is a right. It’s not a gift. It’s a right in every set of legislation across the country. That’s the biggest miss for me – that it’s misunderstood.

“Part of your training is knowing your rights. There are generally three rights: the right to refuse unsafe work, the right to know the hazards that are facing you, and the right to participate in your own health and safety. If you start on those three principles, I don’t think anybody can go wrong, ever.”

Conclusion

“I just want people to make sure they come home safe when they go to work,” Steve says. “If you’re a regulator or a supervisor, take care of one another. That’s how we stop the killing. Let’s make a change in Canada. We’re world leaders in technology. We’re world leaders in everything we do. Let’s lead the world in how we conduct health and safety in the workplace.”

If you would like to discuss further, leave your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach Steve Hunt directly:

Email: [email protected]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hunt-steve-19a10235/
Website: https://www.usw.ca/

If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.