A jury issued a list of recommendations Thursday as an inquest into the workplace death of an Orillia man concluded.
David Pinkney was 31 when he died in 2017 while clearing snow and ice from a conveyor at Walker Aggregates’ Severn Pines Quarry in Severn Township.
The bar he was using to clear the snow and ice became caught on the belt and Pinkney was pulled in. He died on the scene.
The coroner’s inquest was in session for six days. Early Thursday afternoon, the five-person jury returned with 10 recommendations.
Pinkey’s mother, Kathy Green, cried in an Orillia courtroom when the first recommendation was read aloud. The recommendation, directed at Walker Aggregates, states, “To ensure that David Pinkney and the circumstances of his death be remembered and serve to improve the safety culture at the workplace, rename the Severn Pines Quarry to the David Pinkney Quarry.”
“It’s an honour for David. That would be the biggest honour ever,” Green said.
Tom Paleczny, Walker Industries’ vice-president of human resources, said renaming the quarry might not happen.
“I see where they’re coming from as far as remembering David, but I think Walker would have a different idea,” he said, noting the company plans to offer an award across all of its sites in Canada and the United States that would recognize employees for their efforts to create safe workplaces.
Two other recommendations were aimed at Walker Aggregates: “To bolster the internal responsibility system at the workplace, ensure that supervisors directly deal with health and safety matters,” and, “To bolster the internal responsibility system at the workplace, ensure there are rapid, assured, and significant consequences for all safety infractions.”
The internal responsibility system, which essentially means workers at all levels are responsible for the safety of themselves and others, was revisited almost immediately following Pinkney’s death, Paleczny said. The company brought in a third-party consultant to train all of the company’s employees in that system.
While the jury is recommending the company “bolster” that system, Paleczny feels it is already adequate.
“There’s more awareness and more engagement from the employees,” he said.
The remaining recommendations, which can be found at the end of this article, are mainly directed to ministries of the provincial government and encourage them to take measures to ensure employees, and future employees, are properly trained and prepared for the workplace.
Green appreciated the intention behind the recommendations but said it will take more than words to make a difference.
“You can make recommendations on paper, but if you don’t act on them, how do you know people are going to be safe?” she asked. “If they’re implemented properly, hopefully the young kids of today coming to work at these places will make it home at the end of the day.”
During their testimony at the inquest, current and former employees of the Severn Pines Quarry said safety procedures were often not followed prior to Pinkney’s death.
Two of the most common violations of the company’s policies were employees using a skid-steer bucket as a work platform and not using the lock-out/tag-out system, which is meant to prevent machinery from being turned on while people are working on it. That changed after Pinkney’s accident on Feb. 6, 2017, employees testified.
“The (safety) culture has just gotten stronger now. This is the kick in the pants that took us to the next level,” Palecnzy told OrilliaMatters after the inquest.
He said Walker Aggregates is known in the industry for its safety practices, and that’s one of the reasons Pinkney’s death came as such a shock.
Pinkney was well-liked by his co-workers, and Paleczny attributes that to the efforts of local employees to take workplace safety more seriously.
“I was a friend of David’s and it had a profound effect on everyone who worked with David,” he said. “It was a traumatic time for every Walker employee, because it’s a family.”
It profoundly affected Green, too, who can’t shake the memory of the police approaching the front door of her house in Peterborough to break the news that her son had died.
Sometimes it seems like yesterday, she said; other times, it’s like it didn’t happen at all and she believes her son will walk through her door at any time.
“My heart is so broken. It’s hard to live without David,” she said. “This is the kid who looked after me when my mom passed away. (He’d say), ‘Mom, you’ve got to eat.’”
Green and her sister, Carol Kelly, attended all six days of the inquest, which Green described as “a nightmare.”
It was difficult, she said, to relive the details of the accident — details that were recounted at times by those who were working the day of the accident and/or witnessed it.
“When they were choking up, that upset me,” Green said. “It’s hard for me, and I wasn’t even there. I can only imagine what it was like for them.”
The jury was also tasked with determining or confirming the cause of Pinkney’s death and by what means he died. The cause of death was “extensive blunt-force trauma due to crush injury of the head” and his death has been classified as accidental.
Listed below are the remaining seven recommendations made by the jury.
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To the Ministry of Education: Include the “Live Safe Work Smart” training (or any named replacement, as decided by the Ministry of Education) as a mandatory part of the curriculum for all high school students in Ontario, which should be revised as necessary in consultation with the prevention branch of the Ministry of Labour or other appropriate subject matter experts.
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To the Ministry of Education: To prepare children for the “Live Safe Work Smart” training (or any named replacement, as decided by the Ministry of Education), make the connection between childhood and workplace behaviour, and foster good safe decisions, develop ongoing and progressive curriculum to be administered at all levels of elementary school to teach all students about weighing the risks and the consequences of risk-taking behaviour.
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To the Prevention Branch of the Ministry of Labour: Consult as needed with the Ministry of Education to assist in the development and revision of the curriculum related to the “Live Safe Work Smart” training (or any named replacement, as decided by the Ministry of Education).
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To the Ministry of Labour: Hire sufficient additional personnel to increase the size of the prevention branch to better address the needs of supporting the enforcement branch.
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To the Ontario Stone, Sand and Gravel Association: Create an annual award for best safety innovation on the part of a company, or division of a company.
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To the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities: The common core curriculum (first three modules) is to include an additional refresher course that needs to be completed every three years.
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To the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities: Review common core module for generic first-line supervisor training, to ensure the inclusion of modules on human behaviour, and promotion of health and safety compliance.
