Workplace deaths haunt parents
Families of young people killed on the job left with more questions than answers
The memory plays over and over in Rebeccah Schenstead’s mind.
Her doctor’s appointment had finished early and she had time before she was expected at work. She decided to drive to Saskatoon’s Pacific Heights neighbourhood to visit her teenage son, Austyn Schenstead. He was part of a work crew installing heavy concrete sound barriers in a back alley.
Rebeccah saw a flatbed truck loaded with sound barrier panels and told Austyn she didn’t think it looked safe.
“These guys know what they’re doing,” the 19-year-old responded.
A week later, on Nov. 30, 2016, Rebeccah was home with the flu when she got the news. Austyn was dead. A concrete slab had fallen off the truck and crushed him.
“In hindsight I wish I went back and complained about it,” Rebeccah says. “But you just trust that everybody’s doing their job to make sure it’s as safe as it can be.”
Amid the incredible grief were questions. How did this happen? Who designed the crating system used to transport the concrete slabs? Who loaded them? What rules were in place to make sure heavy loads are transported safely?
Were those rules followed? Rebeccah didn’t know who she could turn to for information. She received a letter from the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) with a cheque for $13,003 to cover Austyn’s burial expenses, but that didn’t answer her questions.
More than a month after Austyn’s death she connected by phone with representatives from WCB and the Saskatchewan Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) division. An OHS spokesperson told her the organization was investigating the incident and Rebeccah was asked not to speak with anyone who had been at the work site as it could interfere with the investigation.
“I laid in bed at night for months wondering where was he? How did this happen? How did (the concrete) fall? Trying to picture it and trying to answer all the questions I have in my head,” Rebeccah said. “You make up all these different scenarios and it’s traumatizing. You retraumatize yourself trying to find answers while you know people are sitting on the answers, which adds a whole other layer of frustration.”
Rebeccah said she called the OHS office every month asking for an update into its investigation. Each time she was told work was ongoing. Eventually the company Austyn worked for — Carmont Construction — was charged under the Saskatchewan Employment Act for failing to protect the health and safety of its worker.
Rebeccah wanted to know why the trucking and concrete companies had not also been charged. To her, it seemed Austyn’s death was the result of a series of poor decisions made by all companies involved. Rebeccah’s contact at OHS told her those questions would be answered when Carmont went to trial.
But that never happened. Carmont pleaded guilty to the charge and, during sentencing, the judge accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence that saw the company pay an $80,000 fine.
At the sentencing decision in July 2018, Rebeccah read a victim impact statement and waited for information that never came.
“I thought I would leave court with answers. I thought I would leave court with a binder like (the Crown prosecutor’s) that was full of information that I could go through,” Rebeccah said.
Instead, Rebeccah was told she could request the OHS investigation into her son’s death under provincial Freedom of Information law. So Rebeccah paid the $20 fee and waited. Three months later, nearly two years after Austyn’s death, she received a redacted document consisting largely of investigators’ notes. There were references to the fact investigators had recorded interviews with people, but Rebeccah was not sent the transcripts, recordings or summaries.
Rebeccah had spent weeks checking her mailbox for the documents and had expected an official report with conclusions. The documents she received left her frustrated and with lingering questions. She didn’t have enough information to know if her son’s death had been thoroughly investigated. She still doesn’t understand why more charges weren’t laid.
She has written to Don Morgan, Saskatchewan’s minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety, asking for changes to be made to the OHS division so things are more bearable for families who have lost loved ones in workplace accidents.
One of the things she wants is more transparency around OHS investigations — and she’s not alone. Earlier this year, the University of Saskatchewan’s Social Sciences Research Laboratories (SSRL) conducted a telephone survey for Postmedia News. Researchers contacted 411 Saskatchewan residents and asked them how important or not it was for incident reports into workplace fatalities to be made readily accessible to the public. The overwhelming majority — 87 per cent — said it was very or somewhat important.
Publishing formal reports into workplace accidents is not a new idea. In Alberta, the province’s OHS division puts formal fatality investigation reports online. The name of the deceased worker is withheld, but the name of the employer and details of events leading up to a death are shared.
Morgan has said his ministry is looking into how other provinces publish reports into workplace accidents.
Rebeccah wishes OHS could be more forthcoming with victims’ families during investigations.
Donna Johnson, deputy minister for the Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety, says this isn’t possible.
“While I appreciate it’s a particularly difficult time for families while investigations are underway, it is important to protect the investigative protocols and to ensure that the occupational health officers are able to do their work in a very fact-based and non-biased way so that they can complete their reports and share it with our prosecutor at the Ministry of Justice and then let justice take its course from there,” she said.
Michelle Sprackman’s son, Cade Sprackman, was 18 in January 2015 when he died after being caught in a shredder at Shercom Industries’ tire recycling plant north of Saskatoon.
Like Rebeccah, she struggled to find out about the final moments of her son’s life.
“Each of (my children’s) birth stories is so very important to me, and so having my son’s final moments story is equally as important in a different way,” Sprackman said.
“As a mother (I was) just wanting, wishing things could have been different and wanting to know those details even though they’re so painful. Just, that’s his story. When you’re not privy to an event and nobody’s sharing anything, it’s very painful.”
Sprackman was on “pins and needles” for months, not knowing who she should be calling and wondering if someone should be calling her. She said she didn’t understand why investigators couldn’t give her information, even about how far along the investigation was.
She eventually heard in court details of the final moments of Cade’s life. Shercom was found guilty under the Saskatchewan Employment Act and fined $420,000.
Sprackman requested a copy of the court transcripts for her own records. She did not ask for a copy of the OHS report because she doesn’t remember anyone telling her she could.
“I will probably always feel like I don’t know the whole story and I may never know the whole story and that’s just the way it is,” she says.
Rebeccah and Sprackman are part of a long line of people who have lost loved ones in workplace accidents and then been at a loss for how to proceed.
“Honestly, it was a completely different world than anything I had ever had any connection with. I had absolutely no idea,” Sprackman said.
When Shirley Hickman lost her son in a workplace accident in Ontario in 1996 she was astounded by how few resources were available. Her experience led her to found Threads of Life, a charity that supports families after workplace accidents.
As part of her work, Hickman compiles lists of resources and supports available to families in different provinces.
She says there’s been “significant improvement” in supports offered to families over the last few years, but that almost all families continue to express a desire for openness and transparency from the people who investigate workplace deaths.
One of the most notable improvements is that most provinces — including Saskatchewan — now have staff responsible for being the point of contact for families who lose loved ones in workplace accidents.
Saskatchewan’s OHS division in 2015 tasked its manager of stakeholder relationships to be the point of contact for victims’ families.
Not long after, in the fall of 2016, Saskatchewan’s WCB launched an extended services department that serves as the first point of contact for families affected by workplace fatalities. That service now conducts home visits to assess the level of service families need.
Sprackman, whose son died before those services were available, said she wishes she could have had someone guide her through her ordeal.
Rebeccah said she felt the people she spoke with were sympathetic and patient, but their roles were not meaningful because they could not give her what she needed: answers.
Johnson says the government is trying to do as much as it can.
“We do know each of the fatalities by name and we do work regularly with WCB. We are in contact with them,” she said.
“I don’t know what more we could do.”
Johnson’s office said families are not charged the $20 administration fee when they file Freedom of Information requests for OHS reports regarding their loved ones’ death. Rebeccah, who paid the fee, said that was never communicated to her and her money was not refunded.
Having to pay for the report into her son’s death was one of the many factors that caused Rebeccah grief during the months-long process in which Austyn’s death was investigated and prosecuted. The redacted report, along with letters from WCB and Morgan, now resides in a thin binder.
More than two years after Austyn died and almost one year after the legal case against Carmont concluded, Rebeccah still feels she doesn’t have the answers she needs. She hopes that, if OHS hears about families’ desire for transparency, changes can be made.
“I brought Austyn into this world. I feel like I had the right to know what happened when he left,” she said.
“It bothers me that there’s layers of people that had this information and that, for some reason, they couldn’t give it to his mom. And I think that’s wrong. At a moral level, at an emotional level, at any level.”