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Two companies and four corporate officials face a total of 29 charges for failure to protect the safety of employees.
Vancouver (1 Sept. 2010) - Charges have finally been laid after two years in the deaths of three mushroom farm workers at a Langley, B.C. mushroom farm. Two others were seriously hurt.
The Crown says the two companies, A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd. and H.V. Truong Ltd., are charged as employers, while the four individuals are charged as either directors or officers of the companies or workplaces. They face a total of 29 charges.
The offenses all fall under the province’s worker safety laws and can result in fines of up to $619,721 and six months in jail. The charges allege failure to protect workers from “reasonably foreseeable health or safety hazards.”
The workers were overcome by gas in an enclosed space at the mushroom farm and composting plant on Sept. 5, 2008.
Donna Freeman of WorkSafe BC said at the time that it was one of the most complex investigations the agency had conducted, with more than 25 investigators on the file.
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