A supervisor’s previous violations of the Environmental Protection Act, and failure to pay more than $50,000 in fines for those violations, were a factor in the court’s decision to send her to jail for Occupational Health and Safety Act violations, the court’s reasons show.
In our post on March 11th, we wrote that the court jailed a supervisor for 45 days for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The Ministry of Labour prosecutor, in the supervisor’s sentencing hearing for the OHSA violations, provided proof that the supervisor had previously been convicted of 6 offences under the Environmental Protection Act, including submitting false or misleading information to the Ministry of Environment. She had previously been jailed for EPA offences, and had more than $50,000 in unpaid fines.
A rather obscure but important Ontario statute, the Regulatory Modernization Act, 2007, permits the court to consider previous convictions under another Act when deciding what fine, or length of prison term, a person should receive for violation of a regulatory statute such as the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The court stated:
“Given her troubling history with lack of compliance with prior court prior orders, the evidence before me that her convictions stem from her ongoing work in the trash removal business where she continues to flout various regulatory standards, and her lack of expression of any remorse for an accident that left a young man permanently paralyzed and fraught with pain, I accept the Crown’s submission that only a term of imprisonment would fulfill the sentencing goal of deterrence, both general and specific. It would also further the sentencing goal of denunciation, given her pattern of behaviour. Regrettably, I do not foresee any hope of rehabilitation of Ms. Lootawan, given her antecedents.”
This case demonstrates that a supervisor’s entire regulatory conviction history – including convictions under statutes other than the Occupational Health and Safety Act – can be given significant weight when a court decides the supervisor’s sentence for OHSA violations. A history of violations of the law can, in extreme cases such as this one, land a supervisor in jail.
The court’s reasons are available here.
