Inquest Into Smelter Explosion Concluded October 1

The inquest into a series of explosions that occurred on August 8, 2000 in the copper melting furnace at Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting in Flin Flon began on January 13, 2004. It continued for more than four years, but finally concluded with two additional days of hearings on September 30 and October 1. The judge has now released his final report and recommendations to government.

The report is approximately 300-pages long. The MFL and the unions that participated in the inquest are now reviewing the report and will comment on it on this web site within the next few days.

The explosions the inquiry investigated killed worker Steve Ewing and inflicted life changing injuries on 11 other workers and two supervisors. Hundreds of other workers have suffered trauma and psychological injuries that last until today. All of the families involved and many of the townspeople of Flin Flon are still haunted by memories of the explosion.

During the last two days of an inquest, the MFL presented a submission outlining the factors that it believes contributed to the accident. The United Steelworkers, the International Association of Machinists and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers also made a joint submission to Judge Cummings on behalf of their members during those final days of the inquest.

All of the victims and their families expressed relief to finally reach the conclusion of the process. Victims also noted how proud and appreciative they were of their union's hard work to follow through after so many years and so many legal barriers and delays.

The MFL submission outlined the factors it believes contributed to the tragedy and maked 12 recommendations for changes to the Workplace Safety and Health Act that would help prevent a reoccurrence of this catastrophic event. The submission pointed out that Joint Workplace Safety and Health Committees are not empowered to make specific changes when the risk to workers is great. The MFL submission says there needs to be better authority for the committee to implement their recommendations when death or serious injury would be the result.

The MFL submission takes the position that the Right to Refuse should be a last line of defense for a worker, not a substitute for a properly functioning workplace safety program program. It also states that the provincial Workplace Safety and Health Division should have greater authority, resources and direction to do more preventative work with employers, joint committees and workplaces.

It also suggested that the Act must specify that the first approach to a hazard is to remove or minimize its impact from the workplace and on workers. It is much better to "injury proof" a workplace than train workers to tip toe around hazards.

The MFL submission also urges that all managers, supervisors and workers must be included in hazard recognition training that is relevant to the work they are performing. Annual half day sessions must be dedicated to this training and full days in higher hazard industries.

The MFL submission says that increased fines should be imposed to act as deterrent to companies that ignore safety issues. It also calls for mandatory Inquests for workplace deaths.

The complete MFL submission including all 12 recommendations is available for download in PDF format (98kb, Adobe Reader or similar software required).

In their comprehensive submission they asked for improvements to legislation that would result in better protection for all workers in hot and molten metal industries in Manitoba. They asked for ways to better participate when there is a possibility of a catastrophic event occurring by having a full time worker safety representative on hand to ensure that all possible and probably hazards have been addressed using the hierarchy of controls.

In their submission, the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Machinists and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers requested that the judge recommend additional responsibility for all levels of management within the Workplace Safety and Health Act. Currently beyond the "employer", only supervisors are specifically assigned responsibility for the safety and health of the workers they direct on a daily basis throughout their tasks. This addition would make the differing levels of upper management, superintendants and senior managers more responsible when they are in the planning stages of work process and workplace events to ensure the safety of the workers who will be carrying out that work.

They also made a submission, as did the Crown council, to make improvements to the Fatality Inquiries Act to ensure that the extended delays, challenges and manoeuvring of legal arguments that occurred during this Inquest never happen to future victims and their families. Their full submission is available in PDF format for you to download and view (588kb).