CTV News | The company that owns a problematic apartment building in East York along with one of its directors has been fined following a conviction under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act.

Havcare Investments Inc., the registered owner of 500 Dawes Rd, along with Carolyn Krebs, one of its directors, were sentenced in Provincial Offences Court.

The court imposed a fine of $300,000 to Havcare Investments Inc. Krebs, meanwhile, must pay a fine of $20,000 plus a mandatory 25% victim fine surcharge.

Toronto Fire Services said these charges were brought forward following non-compliance with fire safety requirements.

In May 2026, Krebs, the building’s landlord, was sentenced to 15 days in jail by the Provincial Offences Court and ordered to pay a $120,000 fine as well as a mandatory 25% victim fine surcharge after failing to comply with fire safety requirements in regards to her residential property at 608 Dawes Rd., which is also in East York.

These consequences came following a conviction under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act.

At that time, Toronto Fire noted that her other building at 500 Dawes Rd. was also currently subject to ongoing enforcement action due to fire safety concerns.

CBC News | Qulliq Energy Corporation (QEC) has pleaded guilty to a charge under Nunavut’s Safety Act in connection with the 2024 death of electrician Noah Paniyuk, 58, in Naujaat.

The utility admitted it violated the section of the Safety Act that requires employers to ensure workplaces are safe. The Crown dropped eight other charges against QEC.

QEC said it will pay $240,000, plus a 15% victim surcharge, to the workers’ protection fund.

The company said it has improved safety procedures since Paniyuk’s death, including a new safety management system. QEC said it has also purchased more rescue hooks, which are used to pull injured workers away from live electrical equipment.

Government of Alberta | Two residential construction companies have been fined $250,000 related to a serious workplace injury.

Excel Management Limited Partnership and Benchmark Cribbing Inc., both pleaded guilty in the Calgary Court of Justice to one count each under the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act.

Excel Management Limited Partnership, as prime contractor, pleaded guilty to one count for failing to ensure workers were adequately trained to perform work in a healthy and safe manner. Three other counts against Excel Management Limited Partnership, Excel G.P. Ltd., and Excel Homes Limited Partnership were withdrawn.

Benchmark Cribbing Inc., as an employer, pleaded guilty to one count for failure to ensure that racks used to store materials or equipment were placed on firm foundations that could support the load respectively. The Crown withdrew three other counts.

The Crown issued a stay of proceedings against a third defendant.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred at a new residential development in Calgary on 16 December 2023. Workers were installing forms for a foundation when a cage holding panels fell, striking and pinning one worker and causing serious injuries.

Both companies were ordered to pay $125,000, inclusive of the 20% victim fine surcharge, with the fine to Excel G.P Ltd., payable immediately and the fine to Benchmark Cribbing payable by 23 December 2026.

Government of Alberta | A building and interior materials supplier has been penalised $350,000 related to a workplace fatality.

LX Hausys Canada Inc., as an employer, pleaded guilty in the Calgary Court of Justice to one count under the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act for failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker. The Crown withdrew 14 other counts.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred at the company’s Calgary warehouse on 19 September 2023.

A worker was helping move marble slabs with a forklift when the slabs dislodged, struck the worker and caused fatal injuries.

Under a creative sentence, the court ordered the company to pay $350,000 to the Manufacturers’ Health and Safety Association to develop portable virtual reality forklift simulators to enhance operator training. The association will also partner with Alberta Workforce Essential Skills to develop and provide workplace safety training for English language learners.

The company and the Crown have up to 30 days to appeal the conviction or penalty.

Government of Alberta | A forest products company has been penalised $355,000 related to a workplace fatality.

Weyerhaeuser Company Limited, as an employer, pleaded guilty in the Grande Prairie Court of Justice to one count under the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act for failing to ensure the health and safety of a worker. The Crown withdrew 12 other counts.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred at a lumber mill near Grande Prairie on 18 November 2023.

A worker died after using a pike pole to clear an obstruction from a machine. The pole ejected from the machine and struck the worker.

Under a creative sentence, the court ordered the company to pay $355,000 to Northwestern Polytechnic to develop the Northern Industrial Safety Pathways Program. It will provide structured training and tuition support for new and inexperienced workers in the forestry, oil and gas, manufacturing, mining, and agriculture sectors.

The company and the Crown have up to 30 days to appeal the conviction or penalty.

Government of Canada | ArcelorMittal Exploitation Minière Canada s.e.n.c. (AMEM) has been sentenced by the Court of Québec to pay a fine of $100 million, after pleading guilty to 100 counts of violating the Fisheries Act.

AMEM was sentenced to pay $1 million per count. The total fine is the highest ever imposed in Canada under the Fisheries Act. 

The conviction relates to various deposits of deleterious substances that took place between May 2014 and May 2022. The amount of $99,999,900 will be directed to the Government of Canada’s Environmental Damages Fund and will support projects that have a positive impact on Canada’s natural environments.

In addition to the fine, the Court ordered AMEM to reimburse the cost of the investigation, an amount of nearly $250,000. The Court also ordered AMEM to produce a detailed action plan specifying, among other things, effluent management measures for the Mont-Wright and Fire Lake mining complexes, as well as measures connected to mine drainage at the Mont-Wright complex. The company must submit this plan to Environment and Climate Change Canada enforcement officers by mid-February 2027.

The charges stem from several investigations launched by Environment and Climate Change Canada enforcement officers. These charges relate to the deposits of deleterious substances by the Mont-Wright mining complex and the Fire Lake mine into several streams and lakes frequented by fish in the Fermont region of Quebec.

The investigations, which began in 2018, revealed that AMEM illegally deposited or permitted the deposit of deleterious substances into water frequented by fish or in any place where there was a risk of these substances entering such water, in violation of subsection 36(3) of the Fisheries Act. The incidents took place between May 2014 and May 2022. The substances involved are:

  • Low-pH effluents (acidic).
  • Effluents containing elevated concentrations of zinc, nickel, or suspended solids.
  • Effluents that are toxic to fish.

According to the investigations, these unauthorised deposits were related to several factors associated with the planning of activities, the effectiveness of mitigation measures, and the lack of robust effluent treatment systems, which led to discharges in several areas of the Mont-Wright and Fire Lake sites.

The waters in which there were deposits or the risk of deposits are the Petite rivière Manicouagan and Lac Irène, and tributaries of Lac Saint-Ange. The Lac Saint-Ange sub-watershed is a significant tributary of the rivière Moisie, which is a proposed province aquatic reserve.

Canadian Occupational Safety | Clearwater Seafoods has been ordered to pay a total of $150,000 in connection with the 2024 workplace death of a crew member on one of its clam vessels in Nova Scotia.

The company was sentenced in Port Hawkesbury provincial court after pleading guilty to two charges under Nova Scotia’s Occupational Health and Safety Act arising from the death of 36‑year‑old worker Scott Dicks.

Canadian Occupational Safety (COS) previously reported that Dicks, of Grand Bank, N.L., died in February 2024 while working on the clam-harvesting vessel Anne Risley during a maintenance refit in the port of Mulgrave, N.S.

COS also reported that Clearwater pleaded guilty in March 2026 to two of five provincial safety charges laid under the Act.

An agreed statement of facts, presented at sentencing, said Dicks was electrocuted after coming into contact with a 440‑volt industrial space heater on board the vessel. The heater was being used during the refit while the Anne Risley was docked.

The court heard that the heater was originally equipped with a five‑prong plug compatible with outlets in the engine room. At some point before the incident, an employee cut off that plug and replaced it with a four‑prong plug so the heater could be used on a different circuit elsewhere on the vessel.

The modification allowed the unit to be powered from another outlet but left it improperly wired and created a fatal electrical hazard, according to evidence outlined in court. Dicks was in the cook room with three other workers when he came into contact with the heater and was fatally electrocuted.

Under a joint submission accepted by the court, the $150,000 penalty includes a $70,000 fine and a $10,500 victim surcharge. Clearwater must also pay $19,500 to a provincial workplace health and safety education trust and fund an independent safety review of its operations at a cost of $50,000.

The court was told that Clearwater operates 15 vessels and six processing plants in several countries, employs more than 1,000 workers in Canada and recorded more than $575 million in revenue in 2024. These figures were entered into the record to provide context for the size and capacity of the employer facing the sentence.

Court records show Clearwater admitted it failed to properly install, maintain or use the industrial space heater, and failed to take every precaution in its use, including providing adequate training, instruction and supervision for workers. Those admissions formed the basis of the two charges to which the company pleaded guilty, COS previously reported.

Times News Global | The owner of a mustard and vinegar manufacturing company has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for knowingly polluting the Souhegan River in New Hampshire.

Charles Santich, 60, of New York, received his sentence in federal court. Santich, president and owner of Old Dutch Mustard Co., which operates as Pilgrim Foods Inc., was ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty to also pay a $250,000 fine and serve one year of supervised release.

His company faces a $1.5 million fine and must establish environmental compliance and ethics programmes. Both Santich and the company pleaded guilty in February 2025 to knowingly discharging a pollutant without a permit in violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

The case is said to reveal a deliberate effort to bypass legal requirements. Old Dutch Mustard, with a manufacturing facility in Greenville, New Hampshire, produces vinegar and mustard products that generate acidic wastewater. Under the law, the company was required to store this polluted water in tanks and pay for off-site treatment. Instead, prosecutors detailed a plan that began as early as spring 2015.

Santich hired an excavation company to bury a pipe running from the facility along an abandoned railroad bed, directing acidic wastewater and stormwater toward the Souhegan River. The discharge point was strategically placed downstream from continuous environmental monitoring required due to the company’s history of Clean Water Act violations dating to the 1980s. In May 2017, he expanded the operation, extending the underground pipe several hundred feet to a hilltop and constructing a drainage ditch to flow directly into the river.

For years, Santich directed employees to pump wastewater through the pipe, threatening to fire those who refused. He even instructed the excavation contractor to alter proposals to remove references to the illegal infrastructure. The scheme unraveled in May 2023 when state inspectors discovered low-pH wastewater smelling of vinegar flowing into the river. Santich falsely claimed it was residue from a failed mustard seed planting attempt, a lie he later had employees repeat to investigators.

The environmental impact has been significant. An EPA toxicologist testified that the discharges likely contributed to conditions resulting in a mercury fish consumption advisory in the area. The court found that prior pollution from Old Dutch caused fish kills in the 1990s, and Santich’s continued discharges prevented the recovery of acid-sensitive fish and aquatic life.

The case was investigated by the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, with assistance from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety | Hundseth Power Line Construction has pleaded guilty in Yorkton Provincial Court to one violation of The Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, 2020.

The company was charged with contravening clause 3-1(c) of the regulations (being an employer, fail to comply with the duties of an employer at a place of employment including the provision of any information, instruction, training and supervision that is necessary to protect the health and safety of workers at work, resulting in a serious injury of a worker).

As a result, the Court imposed a fine of $50,000, along with a victim fine surcharge of $20,000, for a total fine of $70,000. One charge was withdrawn.

The charges stemmed from an incident that occurred on 16 April 2023, near Canora, Saskatchewan, in which a worker was seriously injured while working on a power pole.

Canadian Occupational Safety | A Manitoba government department has been fined $100,000 following the 2022 workplace death of a Manitoba Wildfire Service employee in an all-terrain vehicle rollover near The Pas.

The penalty was imposed in provincial court in The Pas against what is now known as the Department of Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures, in connection with the death of 23-year-old initial attack fire crew leader Riley Pich‑Manych.

The department has up to one year to pay the total fine.

According to an agreed statement of facts presented in court, Pich‑Manych and three co-workers were servicing all-terrain vehicles on 11 July 2022 so they could be used in a training exercise the following day. After the maintenance work, the group took the ATVs out for test drives, during which some of the machines became stuck in mud near the Grace Lake fire base, close to The Pas.

One ATV was recovered using a winch attached to another vehicle, but the battery on a second ATV died while the crew was attempting to free it, the court heard. Pich‑Manych then set out on an ATV to retrieve a battery booster. During that trip, his vehicle rolled, causing serious injuries, according to the report.

He was transported to St. Anthony’s General Hospital in The Pas and later flown to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. He was taken off life support the following day. A post-mortem examination confirmed he died from head injuries sustained in the rollover.

The court was told that workers operating the ATVs were wearing hard hats rather than helmets specifically designed for off-road vehicle use. Counsel for the province, lawyer Danny Gunn, said hard hats had been accepted as personal protective equipment for ATV operators under a previous exemption, but that exemption had expired before the incident, according to the report.

Lawyer Josh Weinstein, representing the department, told the court the department would plead guilty to three offences: 

  • Failing to adequately train employees.
  • Failing to adequately supervise them.
  • Failing to provide appropriate helmets. 

The court imposed fines of $40,000 on each of the first two counts and $20,000 on the third. A fourth charge was stayed.

Judge Todd Rambow said Pich‑Manych’s age influenced the size of the penalty, noting that he was still considered a young worker under Manitoba labour law at the time of his death. The Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba defines a young worker as anyone between 15 and 24 years of age.

The court heard that, following Pich‑Manych’s death, new regulations were introduced dealing with training, safety equipment and vehicle use, according to the report. Those changes were described in court as measures aimed at improving how workers are trained to use ATVs and what protective equipment is required when operating them.

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