Ace Bakeries Fined $55,000 After Worker Injured in Mississauga
December 18, 2018 4:15 P.M.
Convicted: Ace Bakery Ltd./Boulangerie Ace Limitee, 22 St. Clair Avenue East, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, a maker of bread and baked products.
Location of Workplace: Ace Bakery's food processing plant at 580 Secretariat Court, Mississauga, Ontario.
Description of Offence: A worker suffered critical injuries after a bread machine activated while the worker was performing maintenance work on the machine.
Date of Offence: August 8, 2017.
Date of Conviction: December 18, 2018.
Penalty Imposed:
Following a guilty plea, the company was fined $55,000 by Justice of the Peace Helena Cassano in provincial offences court in Mississauga; Crown Counsel Jai Dhar.
The court also imposed a 25-per-cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.
Background:
On August 8, 2017, a worker was performing maintenance work on a bread machine at the workplace. The guillotine knife on the machine needed to be adjusted so that the knife would cut the dough evenly. The work was being performed in the presence of a supervisor and a senior director of product development.
In order to access the relevant portion of the machinery, the worker first opened a safety gate. This gate is interlocked so that when it is opened, the machinery cannot be activated or started.
The worker then opened the doors to a mechanical cabinet on the machine in order to access mechanical components to make the adjustments. These cabinet doors were not equipped with interlocks and the worker did not activate the emergency stop button, shut down or lock out the machinery.
While the worker and the senior director of product development were making the adjustments in the mechanical cabinet, the supervisor closed the interlocked safety gate. This caused the bread machine to activate and cycle.
The worker received crushing injuries while caught between one of the machine's moving parts and the frame of the bread machine. The machine was stopped and the worker was taken to hospital for treatment.
Section 76 of Ontario Regulation 851 - the Industrial Establishments Regulation - provides that if the starting of a machine "may endanger the safety of any worker, control switches or other control mechanisms shall be locked out and other effective precautions necessary to prevent any starting shall be taken."
Ace Bakery failed as an employer to ensure that the measures and procedures prescribed by section 76 of Ontario Regulation 851 were carried out at the project contrary to section 25(1)(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.