Maple Leaf Foods Inc. has been fined $825,000 which includes a 25 per cent victim’s surcharge, over a worker accident at its meat-freezing plant in Brampton..
An apprentice millwright employed by a third-party company was sent to inspect the malfunction of two process fans in a freezer plant in January 2022, according to a report by the Ontario Ministry of Labour.
The worker was trying to check the fans for obstructions that prompted the repair call, but the fans were operating at full speed, causing a critical injury, the report said.
The worker demonstrated in an interview with the ministry that he did not know how to properly lock out the fan before starting the work.
Inspectors also discovered that a broken secondary electrical panel made it impossible to lock out the fan even if the worker knew how to properly disable its operation, prompting the agency to cite the company for violating worker safety rules.
Maple Leaf pleaded guilty and was fined C$170,000 by Justice of the Peace Robert Munro.
