Vale Canada fined $175K for 2020 incident at Northern Ont. mine

Vale Canada Ltd. has been fined $175,000 by the Ministry of Labour in connection with a rock burst that left two workers injured, one of them critically. The incident took place Aug. 21, 2020, at Garson Mine. (File)

Vale Canada Ltd. has been fined $175,000 by the Ministry of Labour in connection with a rock burst that left two workers injured, one of them critically.

The incident took place Aug. 21, 2020, at Garson Mine.

“Vale Canada … failed as an employer to ensure that measures and procedures prescribed by regulation were carried out at a worksite,” the ministry said in a news release Wednesday.

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On the day of the incident, two Vale employees were building a ramp in the underground section of the mine.

“The workers had been bolting a large steel screen to a section of rock face,” the release said.

“They were in the process of unloading additional screening to finish the task when a seismic event occurred in the rock pillar behind the rock face ... Rock was ejected, striking and injuring both workers, one of them critically.”

An investigation determined that the cause of the rock burst was “the existence of an undiscoverable angular plane in the rock that could not have been detected by Vale or its ground control engineers.”

However, the ministry found that more rock was being removed “than had been modeled on survey prints.”

“Further, these conditions were not being communicated to Vale’s ground control engineers,” the province said.

“Although these factors did not contribute to, and could not have prevented the rock burst, the ministry determined the company program lacked specifics as to the kind of information that workers should be communicating to their supervisors, and in turn, Vale’s ground control engineers.”

Ontario law required underground mining companies to create communication plans between workers and supervisors “respecting ground stability, ground movement, falls of ground…”

Following a guilty plea in provincial offences court in Sudbury, Vale was fined $175,000 by Justice of the Peace Christine Leclair.

The court also imposed a 25 per cent victim fine surcharge as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime. 

"Health and safety are first principles at Vale, backed by a commitment to continuous improvement and learning," said Vale spokesperson Jeffrey Lewis, in an email to CTV News.

"After internal investigations and technical review, we have updated our policies and procedures to reduce the risk of future similar events – these include revised procedures to deal with elevated seismic activity and a new employee onboarding policy and process for ground control and technical teams."