Three people and two companies have been fined a combined $350,000 for their role in a tragic accident that killed three workers and seriously injured two others at a B.C. mushroom farm in 2008.
A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd., H.V. Truong Ltd. and the companies' three owners were sentenced Friday at Surrey provincial court.
None of those convicted will face jail time, despite entering guilty pleas to 10 of the 29 charges against them – including failure to have a safety program in place at the farm, and failure to educate their workers.
Tracy Phan, whose father suffered serious brain damage in the incident, said fines just aren't good enough.
"I waited all this time to be told there would be no jail time. Three years, and there's still no jail time. This sends a message that your life wasn't worth as much as you thought," she told reporters outside the court.
"I want the employers to go to jail and stay in prison until my dad comes out of his coma."
Three farm employees died after being overcome by toxic gas in a composting shed, another lost his hearing and ability to speak, and Phan's father has been in a coma since the accident.
Investigators have said that on the day of the disaster, a pipe carrying a compost mixture broke, releasing the fumes.
The owners were not charged under the Criminal Code, but the Workers Compensation Act and Occupational Health and Safety Regulations instead. Crown prosecutors announced in September they would not seek jail time, despite pleas from the victims' families.
Defence lawyer Les Makoff says that his clients intend to pay their fines, although A-1 is now bankrupt and its $200,000 fine will not be collected. The owners will have one year to pay their $10,000 and $15,000 charges, while H.V. Truong will have two years to pay $120,000.
Makoff says that the key lesson from the tragedy is that those in the agricultural industry need to think farther ahead when planning big ventures like the Langley mushroom farm.
"My clients thought they were doing the right thing at the time. Clearly there were problems with things they did," he said.
The fines will go towards the Worksafe BC accident fund.
The BC Federation of Labour has called for a separate coroner's inquest to determine exactly what went wrong.
"Giving these companies a fine for the death of three workers and the catastrophic brain injury to two others is really an insult to these people, and no deterrent to anyone else in this province to clean up their act," Federation President Jim Sinclair said Friday.
He believes that an inquest would leave a "legacy" for the families of the victims.
"We've never heard what really happened. We don't know what the WCB did or didn't do. We need an inquest. These families deserve that," he said.
The BC Coroners Service says it is reviewing the case, and a decision on whether to hold an inquest will be made within weeks.
