Dan Boucher was not just a name on a piece of paper or a victim in a report, his tearful daughter told a Sarnia judge this week.
Dan Boucher was not just a name on a piece of paper or a victim in a report, his tearful daughter told a Sarnia judge this week.
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“He was the cornerstone of our family,” Triniti Boucher said.
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Boucher, 49, died June 28, 2022, four days after a forklift accident at ReVital Polymers in Sarnia. Ontario’s Labor Ministry later charged the plastics processor with four Occupational Health and Safety Act counts.
On Tuesday, lawyer Richard J. Nixon pleaded guilty on the company’s behalf to a charge under section 25 of the act. ReVital was fined a total of $75,000.
Prosecutor David McCaskill, who suggested the financial penalty, bailed the figure was just a cold calculation meant to send a message to other industrial companies and didn’t reflect in any way the value of Boucher’s life.
Justice Deborah Austin, who imposed the fine, agreed.
“It’s in no way. . . correlated to the magnitude of the loss of Mr. Boucher and is not meant in any way to trivialize the consequence to his family, to his co-workers, to his friends and to the community (of) a needless and tragic loss of an important and loved person,” she said.
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The court heard through an agreed statement of facts that Boucher, a highly trained and experienced forklift mechanic who had worked at ReVital since it opened in 2017, was asked by a co-worker about 8 am on June 24, 2022, to repair a blown hydraulic hose. A second forklift was used to raise the bucket to give Boucher access to the damaged hose and a metal stand was placed underneath it.
A chain also was installed in the crosspieces of the mast to prevent it from moving. Boucher worked on the repairs by himself at the Lougar Avenue facility.
About 11:30 am, the co-worker heard some sounds and checked on Boucher. The mast of the forklift had tilted back toward the cab, crushing Boucher’s chest between the top of the mast and the top of the cab, the court heard.
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Boucher was taken to hospital, where he died with his family at his side four days later of a hypoxic brain injury caused by the crushing injury.
“The day the forklift crushed him not only shattered his body, but also tore apart the very fabric of our existence,” his daughter said. “Now all that remains are shattered memories and unspoken words lost in the events of his untimely demise.”
There were no witnesses or video surveillance of the incident and an investigation did not determine why or how the mast fell toward the cab frame where Boucher was, McCaskill said. But there were no operators at either forklift’s controls at the time, which was against a section of the act that says powered equipment should not be left unattended with their attachments in the raised position.
The company has since changed its procedures to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again, but it was preventable, McCaskill said.
“A workplace fatality is an extremely serious and heartbreaking event,” Austin said. “And it is a failure to protect a worker.”
The company was given 90 days to pay the fine, which was $60,000 plus a $15,000 victim-fine surcharge. The other three charges were dropped.
ReVital and its lawyer didn’t respond by press time to requests for comment.
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