ALF V1

It's hard to know where to begin in pointing out the flaws - or outright misleading propaganda - in Eric Duhaime's July 7 column blaming unions for the G20 "mess."

Unions, he says, are to blame, but he admits in his opening paragraph there was "excessive police repression."

Talk about blaming the victims!

Nothing that was done by labour-movement supporters can excuse "excessive police repression."

Excessive means to go beyond what is required.

The vast majority of protesters were peaceful, law-abiding citizens exercising their democratic rights.

If in doubt about the value of this kind of protest, I suggest a quick Google of Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi.

I'm sure Duhaime would prefer that people who disagree with public policy (or perhaps just disagree with him) stay home and shut up, but, for now, that's not the kind of country in which we live.

He slams unions for expressing their views, but conveniently fails to mention the massive sums corporations pay to lobby governments for policies that protect them, often against the interests of citizens. Nor does he mention the billions of taxpayer dollars given in corporate welfare and subsidies, or lost to corporate tax cuts.

And let's not forget all the corporate donations to political parties.
As for unionization leading to unemployment! Tell that to those Nordic countries with high unionization rates which escaped the recent recession almost unscathed while other nations were thrown into chaos.

On unionization and choice in the U.S. - what he's talking about here is "right-to-work" legislation, which in typical extreme right-wing fashion means the opposite of what it says.

"Right-to-work" laws are designed purely to weaken the labour movement and to restrict the rights of workers to associate.

It should be noted that the 22 "right-to-work" states are the most depressed economically in the U.S. and have the lowest wages.

I guess that's the model Duhaime would like Canada to follow.

It's certainly the dangerous model members of the Wildrose Alliance Party want for Alberta.

On union dues, even the Supreme Court of Canada, in a ruling last year, reiterated that having all employees pay union dues is essential, because those unions perform tasks for all employees and must have the means to carry out their duties.

As for the $1-billion security tab (some have pegged the costs as high as $2 billion), blame Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

No other country has spent this much when hosting summits, even when faced with much more in the way of protests. French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he'll do the next summit for one-tenth the cost.

Let's remember, too, that unions are democratic.

If you don't like what your union leaders are doing, you can vote them out of office.

That's because unions believe in democracy.

It's a claim Duhaime might find difficult to make, with his objection to public debate on important decisions being carried out by government leaders behind closed doors.

Toronto Sun, Thurs July 7 2010
Byline: Gil McGowan, Guest Columnist

Issue:	McKesson Canada workers on the picket line in Edmonton; 213 members of UFCW 401 are now on strike
Action Requested:	Join the workers on two picket lines.
When:	Today and every day until the dispute is settled.

Background:

The Edmonton workers are seeking wage parity with employees doing similar work in Calgary, but the employer has responded by seeking concessions. The strike began June 28.

AFL's Position:

These workers deserve to be treated with respect in the workplace, but to get it they need our help. Let's join them on the lines.

Action:

The picket lines are up 24/7 at two locations in Edmonton.

• 10931 - 177 Street
• 18503 - 107 Avenue

For more information, contact:

• Don Crisall  at [email protected]; or
• Theresa McLaren at [email protected]

Issue:	First Collective Agreement for Park Operations Workers at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.
Actions Requested:	Volunteers needed immediately to help with leafletting; also get your members to attend rally on July 13, 2010
When:	Inform your members immediately - attend the rally on July 13th!

Background:

Would you work 40 hours a week part time at half-time pay? More than half the Park Operations workers at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede do - and some have been doing it for 15 years. Unlike most Canadians, they never get two consecutive days off. IAM Local 99 is trying to fix these and other workplace issues with a first collective agreement.

AFL's Position:

The rights of workers are being stampeded. It's time to ride to their rescue and help them get a first collective agreement.

Action:

You can help by attending a rally at the Calgary Stampede Exhibition grounds in support of the workers - during the Calgary Stampede.

Time: 9:00 a.m., Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Location: Calgary Stampede Exhibition grounds

Southern LRT exit ramp, Erlton Station, 25th Ave. and Macleod Trail South.

For more information, contact:

• Jason Rockwell at 780-709-2204 or [email protected]; or
• Kevin Clark at 780-235-5019 or [email protected].

 

Would you believe that after the G8 meeting held near Calgary in 2002 the Council of Canadians' Maude Barlow complimented the city police on their approach to political activists who took to the streets?

Would you believe that Starhawk, an activist from San Francisco, said the police in Calgary behaved like no other security force she had seen in her round-the-world travels on the protest circuit? No sinister face-shields, no tear gas, water cannons or dogs.

Given what happened during the G8/G20 meetings in Toronto and other locales over the past few years, the Calgary experience now seems like a short but pleasant daydream. But it also shows what's possible when police and political activists try to respect each other's rights and responsibilities.
The G8 leaders gathered at a secluded mountain resort - Kananaskis Village - about 80 kilometres west of Calgary. They were fenced in by 1,000 soldiers and sharpshooters and a 150-kilometre no-fly zone patrolled by CF-18s. Jean Chrétien chose the location. And given that 9/11 had shocked the world less than a year before and that U.S. president George W. Bush would be in attendance it seemed like a brilliant solution to numerous security issues.

Activists with unions, social justice groups and student organizations realized early on that they were not going to get anywhere near the G8 leaders so they focused their attention on downtown Calgary. Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour said they wanted to create a festival atmosphere so various causes could be brought to the attention of the general public without violence and rancour. Of course, not everyone believed this. Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier still treated them like terrorists in training.

The police, however, decided to take a softer approach to demonstrators. For months before the G8 meeting they met with representatives of various groups and listened to their complaints about police harassment. They also made it clear that they knew protesters had certain rights and they would respect them.

And indeed downtown Calgary did take on a festival atmosphere during the G8 meeting. People marched through the streets with costumes and provocative banners while families stood along the route as enthralled as if they were watching a parade. The police kept the peace on bicycles and could be seen joking with the protesters, even offering them bottles of water. Dozens of heavily armed riot police were close at hand but always out of sight.

The protesters - everyone from the Council of Canadians to the Anti-Capitalist Collective to the Canadian Auto Workers to the Pagan Cluster - were remarkably disciplined.

When a few masked agitators started rocking and climbing a fence around the Stampede complex where G8 leaders were having a cocktail party, protest leaders turned the crowd around. They effectively isolated the fence rockers who were quickly surrounded by police and sent on their way.

One morning, black-clad thugs began a shoving match against officers in a bike unit. After about 10 minutes, a heavily armed tactical team arrived on the scene and the guys in black simply ran away. Again no one was arrested.

It's true that there were far fewer demonstrators than in Toronto. And some activists were stopped at the border and never made it to Calgary. But it is also clear, even to seasoned activists, that an intelligent, respectful and well-disciplined police force made all the difference.

Toronto Star, Tues July 6 2010
Byline: Gillian Steward

Good morning. My name is Gil McGowan and I am the President of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

As most of you know, the AFL is Alberta's largest organization of labour unions. We represent 29 unions in the public and private sectors with a collective membership of more than 140,000 working Albertans.

As you probably also know, the AFL has played a central role in the fight to keep our health care system whole, and to keep it public.

With our partners in groups like Friends of Medicare, we fought against Bill 37 in the late 1990s.

In 2000, we fought against Bill 11- the provincial government's next attempt at expanding the role of private hospitals.

And in 2005 and 2006, we played a key role in the fight against the Third Way.

In all of these cases, the labour movement - through the AFL - marshalled its resources, mobilized its members and helped win the support of a clear majority of Albertans.

The ads, the town halls, the thousands of calls and letters to MLAs - we helped make those things happen. And we did it because we believe in our hearts, and in our guts, that public health care is worth fighting for.

All of these campaigns were instructive. They demonstrated that Albertans are passionately supportive of their public health care system. They demonstrated that Albertans are willing to pay for a top-notch public health services through their taxes. And they demonstrated that Albertans are deeply distrustful of, and opposed to, all efforts to weaken the system through privatization.

For our purposes this morning, I think it's particularly important that we look back on our province's experience with the so-called Third Way.

While we were preparing for this presentation, we dug up a document called "Removing Barriers" which was prepared by the government in 2005.

It was a summary of what the Third Way was all about - and it's worth reading if only to remind us that we've been here before.

According to the Removing Barriers document, the main goal of the Third Way was to pave the way for private insurance and for doctors to practice in both the public and private systems. Both of these changes were to be made by amending the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act and the Hospitals Act ... the same laws now under review by this committee.

Back in 2006, the people of Alberta heard this sales pitch and they made it clear that they weren't interested in buying.

They didn't want the government experimenting with private insurance. They didn't want the government to allow doctors to practice in both a public and private system or any other money-making scheme that would siphon resources from the public system to a for-profit one.

And the government was forced to back down.

So here we are, almost 4 years later.

The lesson from these earlier attempts at privatization should have been that the people of Alberta are not interested in more user fees, a parallel private system, or purchasing private insurance.

They are not interested in schemes that allow queue-jumping. And they're not fooled by loaded political buzzwords like "choice" and "flexibility."

What Albertans wanted then, and what they continue to want now, is a properly-funded public system that uses intelligent innovations within the public system to make sure people get the care they need, when they need it.

So what has the government learned from Bill 37, Bill 11 and the Third Way?

Well, they don't seem to understand what "no" means.

If anything, it appears the lesson the government has taken from all of these failed attempts at reform is not to accept that Albertans don't want more private health care, but rather that they should be just use new and better political "spins" to sell the idea.

That's why my organization is frankly suspicious of this committee and its work. Even some of your reassurances make us suspicious.

For example, this Committee has tried to reassure Albertans that we're not heading for a repeat of the Third Way by saying that whatever changes are made, the legislation that comes out the other end will be in compliance with the Canada Health Act.

With all due respect, this is perfect example of the political spin I was talking about - the kind of game-playing that makes Albertans more distrustful of the government's real intent, not less.

As all of you undoubtedly know, the Canada Health Act does not prevent private health services, private delivery, or private insurance.

The Canada Health Act does do is ensure that federal spending on health care supports publicly administered, comprehensive, universal, portable and accessible provincial health care insurance plans.

But the CHA is silent on whether there should or shouldn't be a parallel private system available to those who can afford to buy their way to the front of the line using US-style private insurance.

That means that restricting the growth of a parallel for-profit health care system is the role of provincial Legislatures, not the federal government through the Canada Health Act.

And what do the laws in Alberta say today? The good news, from our perspective, is that they actually do the job of protecting the integrity of the public system.

For example, in sections 6 and 7 of the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act physicians are allowed to either opt in or opt out of the public system. There is no law against a physician setting up a wholly private practice. But the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act contains some powerful disincentives for physicians to go "private" - most notably the prohibition on opted-out doctors from receiving subsidies from the public system.

In addition, section 26 of the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act outlaws contracts for private insurance for services that are covered in the public system, and private insurance is also not allowed to pay for all or part of fees charged by physicians who opt-out of the public system.

In other words, these are the laws that keep our system public. These laws, Alberta laws, are what keep the privatization monster at bay.

Unfortunately, they also happen to be the laws that this committee is proposing should be amalgamated, streamlined, and possibly relegated to regulation.

That's why we're worried.

We're worried because you're proposing to tinker with legislation governing opting-in, subsidization, and private insurance contained in the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act which are the only barrier to the creation of a private health care market.

We also worried because the legislative model you're proposing for the new "Alberta Health Act" is the model that the government used in the Drug Program Act.

As you know, the Drug Program Act is enabling legislation, which permits the Minister to establish a drug program for the purpose of providing funding for, or providing, drugs, services and approved drugs.

The Drug Program Act then permits the Minister to make regulations which will determine all of the details of the plan, including who is covered for what kind of drug coverage, amounts of co-payments and deductibles.

The Drug Program Act puts most of the power to decide the future of Albertans' drug coverage in the regulations, not the legislation or statute itself.

The key difference between a statute and a regulation - and I know this is obvious, but it bears repeating - is that a statute is approved by the Legislative Assembly following debate before it becomes law, while a regulation is not.

If the Drug Program Act is accepted as the model for the new Health Care Act, Alberta's health-care legislation will contain no details of the core health-care framework.

All details will be left to the Minister's discretion and will not subject to debate in the Legislative Assembly. Further, the Minister can change the regulations at any time without notice and without debate.

This model offers no assurances that delivery of insured services using public funding will be organized in a manner that preserves delivery of health care on a non-profit model; or appropriate standards for health and health services in Alberta will be established and enforced.

To us, it seems like a tool designed to ram privatization down the throats of Albertans. It seems to be a strategy aimed at giving the government the power to fundamentally change our health care system under the cover of night, because they haven't been able to do their dirty work successfully in the full light of day.

All of this is not to say that there aren't constructive changes that could be made to our various pieces of health care legislation.

For example, we could expand the services covered under the Alberta Health Care Insurance Act to include more services, such as eye care.

We could move all Health-Insurance related legislation into one piece of legislation, consolidating the Hospitals Act and the Health Care Insurance Act, setting out more services that are insured under our public plan.

We could beef up accreditation and inspection of non-hospital surgical facilities such as the now-bankrupt Health Resources Centre, so that they are subject to the same rules as a public hospital.

We could improve the standards in nursing and mental health care, which every reasonable person agrees would help to protect and better care for Alberta's most vulnerable citizens.

But there is no need to amalgamate all of the legislation, and there is even less need to structure our health care laws as enabling legislation. This committee appears to be breaking the things that don't need fixing while not even looking at the areas - like mental health and seniors' care - that are actually broken.

In conclusion, I want to be perfectly clear with this committee.

My purpose here this morning is to let you and the government know that we have a pretty clear idea of what you're up to.

In the language of that old Third Way document, it seems to us that your task is to remove barriers. And the barriers you seem intent on removing are the barriers that currently exist in legislation to private insurance and the introduction of a parallel, private health care system. Perhaps most disturbingly, you want to achieve these radical changes in a way that is profoundly undemocratic.

So please, tell the Minister, tell the cabinet, tell the Premier: if they go ahead with this attempt to structure our health laws against the wishes and best interests of Albertans, we in the labour movement will, once again, stand up for and with ordinary Albertans.

Tell them not to fix something if it's not broken.

And tell them to do what Albertans have been asking for from the beginning: and that is to improve the public system by focusing on reforms within the public system itself, not by constantly returning to discredited and dangerous privatization schemes.

Thank you.

Gil McGowan, President
Alberta Federation of Labour
Thursday, June 29, 2010
Calgary

Only thirty-three percent of Albertans are covered by a workplace pension plan, a rate below the national average. And with the number of retirees set to spike as the baby boomers leave the workforce, pressure on the Canada Pension Plan is growing.

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty wants to expand Canada's pension strategy, but his Alberta counterpart says our province would prefer to help Albertans save on their own.

When you want to retire, will you have enough cash? Or do Albertans need a retirement boost? And should that boost come from government?

Joining us for the debate is Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, and Alan Caplan, a retired financial planner and personal finance columnist with the Edmonton Sun.Federation.

Alberta Primetime, June 29, 2010

See the debate here:

http://www.albertaprimetime.com/Stories.aspx?pd=1131&FlashVars=Video/PTG_062910.flv

The Alberta government's revenue model is broken and the time has come to talk about how to fix it, says Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) president Gil McGowan. Yes, that means we need to talk about taxes.

"Nationally and internationally, politicians, economists and commentators recognize that governments must pay for services and avoid deficits not only by cutting spending, but by increasing revenue," says McGowan.

"Here in Alberta, all we hear are shrill, kneejerk calls for more and more tax cuts, without any acknowledgement of what that will mean for vital public services, including our hospitals, nursing homes, schools and universities."

In a report released today, the AFL says Albertans have made it clear time and time again that they want good public services and programs. Education and health care are their priorities, while tax cuts are low on their list of desires.

The report - Which Way Will We Pay? It's time for a grown-up conversation about Alberta's revenue problem and how we fund vital public services - shatters the myth that Alberta spending on services is out of control.

"Spending on public services as a percentage of GDP stands at about 12 per cent, down dramatically since the early 1990s, when we spent over 20 per cent of GDP. No other province spends a smaller proportion of its GDP on public services than Alberta - indeed the average for other provinces remains in the 22-per-cent range," says McGowan.

The result is that, despite being Canada's wealthiest jurisdiction, Alberta has mediocre or sub-standard services. Even those service levels are at risk because our revenue is both inadequate and volatile, due to an over-reliance on fluctuating income from the oilpatch.

That problem can be easily and quickly addressed by reforming our revenue system, says McGowan. For example, Alberta's flat-tax structure on income taxes is costing about $5.5 billion per year. Making Alberta's overall tax system comparable with other provinces could bring in an extra $10 billion to $18 billion per year.

"From this evidence, it's clear that Alberta's doesn't have a spending problem, it has a revenue problem," says McGowan. "As Canada's wealthiest province, we shouldn't be cutting services and sacrificing our future. We can afford to do better. The so-called spending crisis is really a result of bad political choices."

In order to kick-start a provincial conversation on government revenue, the AFL today invited three leading Canadian economists to a public panel discussion at The Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary.

Roger Gibbins, President and CEO of the Canada West Foundation; Todd Hirsch, Senior Economist with ATB Financial; and Erin Weir, an economist with the United Steelworkers union's Canadian national office joined McGowan to discuss how Alberta can generate the revenue it needs to pay for public services and avoid deficits.

-30-

Media Contacts:
Gil McGowan, President, Alberta Federation of Labour, 780-218-9888
Dr. Roger Gibbins, President and CEO, Canada West Foundation, 403-264-9535
Todd Hirsch, Senior Economist, ATB Financial, 403-815-2277
Erin Weir, United Steelworkers, 416-544-6005

Which Way Will We Pay? It's time for a grown-up conversation about Alberta's revenue problem - and how we fund vital public services

Too often the budget dialogue in Alberta is dominated by shrill, kneejerk calls for cuts. That's the dialogue that takes place in the mainstream media and among some of the business and political elite. However, it's isn't representative of what Albertans think.

Globetrotter Darina Valentik died in the path of a slow-moving railcar.
Teenager Joel Balfour was killed when a backhoe bucket struck him in the head.

Baker Donna Noonan died after tripping while carrying doughnuts at a crowded Tim Hortons.

All had recently started new jobs.

All toiled on busy work sites and received little training.

All three wanted to make a living in Alberta's unprecedented economic boom, and died in its wake.

"They come from Newfoundland and Ontario and Quebec and China ... big promises," says Valentik's mother Danielle, from her home in Belleville, Ont.

"It's quite often a one-way trip alive, and in a box returning home."
As Alberta's economy shifted into overdrive during the past decade, thousands of Canadians flooded into the province to find work.

Others journeyed from abroad, leaving countries such as the Philippines, Mexico and Somalia, to cash in. Many had no experience or training, but that didn't matter.

A job awaited.

At its zenith in 2006, Statistics Canada declared: "Alberta is in the midst of the strongest period of economic growth ever recorded by any province in Canada's history."

"The boom has brought unbridled prosperity to Alberta."

Yet, the dark side of the boom soon surfaced.

The number of deaths on the job soared as businesses got busy, with 1,285 workers killed in the past decade.

In 1999, work fatalities -- excluding people who died from longer-term occupational diseases -- hit 72.

By 2007, the number of lives lost jumped to 91.

The following year, before an overheated economy began cooling off, 102 people perished because of a job.

Work was killing us.

Northern Alberta, with the massive Athabasca oilsands near Fort McMurray, was hit particularly hard as investment ramped up.

In the space of one year, the temporary population living in construction work camps and on the streets of Fort McMurray nearly doubled to 20,000 in 2007.

As crude prices surged and oilsands plants sprouted from the boreal forest, five workers in the region stretching from Wood Buffalo to Cold Lake were buried in 2008, according to provincial data analyzed by the Herald.
In contrast, no workers died there in 2004.

As the decade progressed, employees bustled on manic sites to get the job finished on time and on target.

"When things are busy, it's hurry, hurry, rush, rush, get the job done," says Mike Joyce, a member on the province's Occupational Health and Safety Council.

"Let's take all the work we can possibly get," he says, describing attitudes during the period.

"I don't really care how you get it done, just get it done."

In the past 18 months, Alberta's economy has geared down.

Fewer people are dying at work.

But as business shows some signs of recovering, many are worried the lessons of the last boom haven't been learned -- and deaths on the job could rise again.

Darina Valentik was a small woman -- just 115 pounds and a shade over five feet tall. She wasn't built for hard labour.

In June 2007, the 34-year-old sparkplug had recently returned to Canada after teaching English in Thailand.

A free-spirited traveller trained in homeopathy, she hoped to become a pilot and work in Canada's North.

First, she needed money. In bustling Fort McMurray, she quickly found a job as a labourer.

"She didn't want to be a heavy equipment operator," recalls her mother. "She said, 'Oh mom, it's just a part-time job. It's just for a few days.' "

Darina worked at a yard at Athabasca Northern Railway, a busy transportation link shipping materials for major oilsands players.
Earning $20 an hour at Chief Hauling Contractors Inc., Darina's responsibilities included ensuring rail cars moving petroleum coke were properly connected.

Less than three weeks into the job, on the morning of June 30, she faced trouble.

The knuckles of some railcars weren't lining up and Darina struggled to fix the problem with a crowbar.

With one misstep, her size 4 right foot got stuck in a small gap between two rail tracks.

No one was at the controls to stop the slow-moving train.

In the first hour of her first day working alone, Darina was trapped.
The car moved toward her at a pace less than walking speed. A nearby truck driver, there to deliver coke, scrambled to pull her free, but failed.
The hopper-style car rolled over her leg, then crushed her slender body.
A federal work site investigator's report found Darina died from "multiple traumatic injuries."

The report, obtained by the Herald, states it didn't appear she was told during training to stop the cars before trying to fix the rail coupling problem.

Darina was following the "inadequate" instructions she had been given, it concluded.

After Darina's death, her employers said they didn't know she was working alone that day.

Chief Hauling Contractors was charged under the Canada Labour Code for failing to ensure Darina was made aware of every known or foreseeable health or safety hazard on site.

The company pleaded guilty and was fined $225,000.

"When I close my eyes, I see her blood on the tracks," her mother says.
"When I open my eyes, I still see her blood on the tracks."

The summer Darina Valentik was killed, the province couldn't get enough workers.

Unemployment neared record lows and by mid-2006, Alberta had gained 57,000 people from other parts of Canada during a one-year period, smashing previous migration records.

Faced with a chronic shortage of people in almost every field, the provincial government predicted it would need 400,000 new labourers by 2015.

The picture soon changed as infl ationary pressures pushed some people and companies out of Alberta. Then, the world spun deep into a recession.
In 2009, Alberta's exports slumped about 40 per cent as demand for oil, natural gas and other commodities plunged.

At the same time, work-related fatalities (excluding occupational diseases) fell 42 per cent to 61 deaths.

Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk says the economic slowdown played a part in the drop, noting the boom brought many inexperienced staff to the province.

But he credits government education programs and employer action for improving work site safety and the steep decline in deaths.

"We were focusing heavily on education and I think it's paying dividends," Lukaszuk says.

Businesses, he adds, have learned "cutting corners on safety doesn't actually make you more efficient or more competitive."

After Darina was killed, Chief Hauling was purchased by another company, Gibson Energy, which says it learned hard lessons from her death.

It ramped up training programs, for example.

At one point in 2008, Gibson Energy turned down contracts because it didn't have the capacity to train more inexperienced workers.

"There's a certain point where you have to say that taking on that work is not worth the risk associated with it," says Rod Bantle, a Gibson Energy senior vice-president.

As the economy shows new signs of life, training and employment could become a worry for employers.

"You're going to go (from) zero to 100 again, with a very short period of time to try to ramp up," Bantle says.

"There are still only so many people that you can take on."

Kevin Balfour remembers the morning in January 2006, when he drove his 19-year-old son Joel around the Edmonton area to drop off job applications to a handful of employers.

Joel, a motocross racer, wanted to attend business school and design a clothing line for extreme sports enthusiasts.

He left the family home in Vernon, B.C., to seek work in Alberta.
It didn't take long. the digging area.

The operator didn't see the teenager move to retrieve a pry bar until a flash of light flickered off Joel's refl ective coveralls.

It was too late.

McNally desperately tried to stop the machine's bucket but it continued downward, striking the young man in the head.

Joel was knocked unconscious, bleeding badly. It took more than two hours to rush him to Grande Cache's hospital from the remote site.
At 3:30 a.m., a doctor pronounced the teenager dead.

A provincial investigation later found no one on site had up-to-date first aid training and an emergency response plan had not been reviewed with workers.

McNally, it noted, had been operating the machine for a month, without seeing the operator's manual.

Both men were "new to the oil industry and would not be considered fully competent under the Alberta Occupational Health and Safety legislation.
"This was due to lack of training and experience for both workers," the investigators concluded.

No safety charges were laid in the case.

Although he had only a few weeks of experience operating the backhoe, McNally now believes he should had been "more of a role model" to the younger man.

"I'd like to go back and change that day," says McNally, 27.

"It's happened to many others just like me."

Joel's father says the Crossing Company handled the death as well as it could, helping fund a $1,000 memorial scholarship in his son's name at his former high school. The company also established a safety award in his honour.

Balfour remains concerned about the type of work his son was doing, but the Vernon man also believes "it's a very unfortunate accident."

Crossing Company president Ryan MacLean doesn't know the details of Joel's death four years ago, as he wasn't in the top job at the time.

"It was a tragic event. That's all I can really say," he offers.

Boom or bust, workers can die at any time.

Some companies say the state of the economy isn't the key factor when it comes to promoting safety.

Instead, protecting workers is about changing the mindset of everyone on the job.

"It's a cultural thing," says Duane Mather, chief executive of Nabors Canada, one of the country's largest oilpatch drillers.

"Safety is not like a light switch. You can't just turn it on and off ."
Just a few years ago, Nabors Canada had its "fair share" of safety issues, Mather says.

The company saw two employees killed in 2004, including 25-year-old Matthew Schwartz, who perished.

A Nisku-based oilpatch driller, the Crossing Company, asked Joel to come back that same day.

By 4 p.m., the teenager was climbing onto a work truck headed for Grande Cache.

"It was the last time I saw him," says his father.

Three weeks into the job, Joel began an overnight shift at a remote site on the province's western edge, 70 kilometres north of Grande Cache.

The Crossing Company had been contracted by petroleum producer Talisman Energy to drill underneath several creeks to minimize the environmental impact of a pipeline.

Just after midnight on Jan. 24, Joel and backhoe operator Shawn McNally were working to dig a small trench.

"It was snowing. And there wasn't much light -- one light tower," recalls McNally.

As McNally operated the backhoe, Joel toiled on foot and headed into in a fiery service rig blaze near Sundre.

Nabors Drilling also faces safety charges related to the February 2007 death of Patrick McFadden, who was crushed at a Calgary site while working for another firm.

Nabors has changed its ways when it comes to safety, adopting a goal of zero injuries and fatalities at the workplace, Mather says.

In the wake of Schwartz's death, Nabors improved the way it snubs wells. It also has focused on getting workers to use seatbelts while driving on the job. The chief executive often lectures employees about strapping in.

"You gotta remember the bottom end of our labour workforce -- between the semi-skilled and the unskilled guys we got -- this is the Broncs. This is the 18 to 22 year-old, tougher than nails, 'I'm bulletproof. I don't need a seatbelt. I can drink and drive.' All of that mentality and that attitude," Mather says.

"That's the toughest thing to get out of them."

As for the economy, the oilpatch executive maintains companies must keep people's attention fixed on safety at all times, especially when they might be distracted by "whether they have a job or not."

But Gil McGowan of the Alberta Federation of Labour doesn't believe businesses or the provincial government are doing enough.

He says the government's approach to inspection and enforcement is weak, and the province's economy is dominated by potentially dangerous industries.

McGowan is also worried another economic upswing will lead to more deaths.

A Conference Board of Canada report predicts Alberta's economic recovery will solidify next year with 72,000 new jobs. RBC Economics forecasts the provincial economy will surge 4.2 per cent in 2011, trailing only Saskatchewan.

"I have no doubt that the number of workplace accidents and fatalities will increase as the economy starts to heat up," says McGowan.

"We'll be right back where we were during the boom in terms of health and safety."

For its part, the provincial government has placed particular emphasis on educating young workers who lack experience and training, making them more vulnerable to injuries.

For example, 16-year-old Mitchell Tanner was killed in June 2008 at a St. Albert Rona store. The forklift he was hanging on the side of tipped over and crushed him.

Both Lukaszuk's department and the Workers' Compensation Board aggressively promote safety campaigns targeting young employees. Now, the minister says, he needs to add more substance to the province's workplace safety strategy for all types of workers.

"We are almost at a point where we have maximized on education," Lukaszuk acknowledges

"The next step is stepping up enforcement."

Alberta workers are not only being killed in rugged industries. Death can occur in the most unexpected of places.

During the boom years, Tim Hortons became the poster child for companies desperately chasing staff , sometimes offering more than $15 an hour for untrained labour.

In this period, 54-year-old Donna Noonan took a baking job at a busy Tim Hortons in a blue-collar neighbourhood in north Edmonton.

Donna and her adult daughter, Adele Card, were best friends.

Even after Card married and was in her 30s, they lived in the same house, often staying up late into the evening in conversation.

A native Albertan, Noonan and her husband Larry retired from their trucking business in 2006. Larry was battling respiratory tract cancer and the couple wanted to stick closer to home.

On Jan. 10, 2007, less than a month after starting work at Tim Hortons, Donna was hauling trays of frozen Timbits out of the store's cooler.

She tripped over a heavy milk crate protruding into the aisle, breaking her hip in the fall.

Donna sat in a chair at work until her daughter was able to pick her up, waiting an hour to go the hospital.

Card says her mother didn't want to make a big deal of the injury, insisting she didn't need an ambulance.

The new baker eventually wound up in the Royal Alexandra Hospital, remaining there for more than a month. On Feb. 18, she died from painful complications related to the fracture, including a surgical wound infection and a ruptured bladder.

A provincial investigation discovered Donna wasn't trained about workplace hazards, nor were other new employees.

The busy restaurant didn't have enough room to store Timbits, coffee and other materials for the amount of business going on, causing a "tripping and product securement hazards to workers," the investigation said.
The fatality report uncovered a number of other safety issues, including that there was no manager or supervisor present, and no one insisted on calling an ambulance or getting first aid for Donna.

"The medical examiner said to me, 'Had your mother never fallen and broken her hip, she would not have died,' " Card says. "That just about put me in the loony bin."

The night her mother was injured, the angry daughter left the hospital and returned to the Tim Hortons to tell staff Donna had broken her hip.

"I said, 'Who is the supervisor?' " Two teenagers behind the counter began arguing about who was in charge, she recalls.

"None of them were in their 20s. They all looked like high school students," Card says.

The investigation said the company did not report the injury to the government as it was supposed to under provincial law.

In fact, the incident wasn't reported until eight days after Donna died.
No charges were laid.

The owners of the Tim Hortons franchise, North-Ed (1994) Ltd., did not respond to an interview request.

Tim Hortons spokesman David Morelli says the families that own the Edmonton Tim Hortons reviewed their workplace safety procedures immediately after Donna's death.

Provincially certified auditors were brought in and the store was the first "quick service restaurant" to be awarded a safety certification
from the Alberta Hotel Safety Association, he says.

"In the three years since Ms. Noonan's tragic death, Tim Hortons staff are more educated, better trained and better equipped to prevent or treat workplace safety issues."

That's of little comfort to the family of Donna Noonan.

Spurred by the circumstances of her mother's death, Card is now taking
University of Alberta courses to become a safety professional.

She won't forget how her mother often talked about the overcrowded conditions she faced working at the Tim Hortons.

"She said, 'You know one day somebody's going to get hurt,' " says her daughter.

"Just think how ironic it is. She was the one who was saying it. Nothing was happening and she's the one who got hurt."

Edmonton Journal, Sun Jun 27 2010
Byline: Kelly Cryderman

This year, about 1,900 Alberta employers have been flagged with substandard safety records, a figure that's surged by a third in the past 10 years.

Nearly 300 have been on the Workers' Compensation Board's poor performers list for at least half a decade.

Yet, eight years after the provincial government passed legislation allowing it to publicize which companies hold the worst safety records, it continues to fight against releasing the information. So does the WCB, the provincial insurance agency responsible for compensating injured workers.

Today, their stance is under fire from a diverse group of industry supporters, opposition critics, families -- and even a former labour minister in the Klein government. The group believes the information must be released to deter the worst offenders.

"It should be public. Then maybe the safety would be better," says James St. Marie, whose brother, Keith, was crushed by a communications tower near Olds in 2003.

Likewise, the Construction Owners Association of Alberta -- which represents several oilpatch giants with mega-building projects -- favours outing employers with lousy safety records, saying it would help companies choose contractors and improve safety at job sites.

"Those contractors out there that find themselves on that list, I mean that is negative publicity for them," says Ron Genereux, association president and a Suncor Energy executive. "By virtue of that fact, you'll see them improve and try to work hard to just get off that list."

The fight over safety data traces back almost a decade.

At the time, then-employment minister Clint Dunford began warning executives the province would soon let Albertans know which companies don't take safety seriously.

Today, the former Tory minister remains adamant workers have a right to their companies' safety records.

"I want young people to know when they go and apply for work with an employer, that he's either got a good reputation or a bad reputation," says Dunford, who retired from politics in 2008.

"I don't care whether they go and work for the ones with the bad reputation, I'm just telling them then be G--damn careful of what you're getting into."

But Dunford's push to release safety records met with staunch resistance.

Worried about getting sued by companies, some senior department officials opposed publicizing the information, he recalls. Some Conservative politicians also expressed concern.

"The opposition wasn't overt," Dunford says. "It was the sort of thing where somebody would whisper to you, 'Well, I've got quite a bit of support in the business area and I'm not sure they're going to want to be agreeing to all of this kind of stuff .'"

Dunford was moved to another portfolio in November 2004 before he could gain enough support for his plan. His successor, Mike Cardinal, put the initiative on hold. Cardinal won't discuss the matter with the Herald, nor will former premier Ralph Klein.
The issue of identifying companies with substandard safety histories is on the front burner again after the province's auditor general revealed the government wasn't cracking down on employers who repeatedly break occupational laws.

In response, Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk pledged in the legislature to release safety records of all companies.

However, he first wants to make sure there's no unintended consequences.

"Competitors will use it in the industry for their purposes. Employees will be using it in the process of decision-making, whether they want to get hired by a certain company or not," Lukaszuk tells the Herald.

"Companies that put out contracts ... will take that into determination because who wants to hire a poor performer? So it has many, many implications."

The minister has struck a committee to review how workplace safety statistics are gathered and what effect releasing the information would have on businesses. Recommendations are expected this summer.

Yet behind the scenes, the government is still fighting to suppress the names of employers with high injury rates, information sought by unions through the freedom-of-information law four years ago.

In arguing to keep secret the names of companies targeted for extra inspections, Alberta Employment and Immigration contends it doesn't want these companies to know they're under watch, documents provided to the Herald show.

Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan is skeptical of Lukaszuk's talk of transparency.

"Given this government's track record on issues related to disclosure, I'll believe it when I see it," McGowan says. "Talk is cheap."

The battle between the province and unions isn't the only information fight underway.

Last June, the Workers' Compensation Board rejected the Herald's freedom-of-information request for names of companies paying a surcharge because of high injury claims.

The insurance board contends disclosing their identities could encourage some employers to break the law and not report worker injuries, documents show. It also notes it's obligated under provincial law to protect the business interests of employers.
"Publishing the names of poor performing employers is of little value to improving safety on a work site," states an internal WCB media strategy obtained by the Herald through a second freedom-of-information request.

"It's more beneficial to work with these employers to encourage and reward improved safety performance."

Alberta's information and privacy commissioner is considering whether to hold an inquiry into the board's decision to withhold its poor performers list.

The WCB has been tracking companies with substandard safety records since 1998, levying surcharges against employers with consistently high worker injuries.

The surcharges were hiked two years ago because the agency was worried some companies were simply treating the penalty as a "cost of doing business."

Calgary Herald, Fri Jun 25 2010
Byline: Renata D'Aliesio