A fine of half a million dollars has been issued against the owners of the Ignace samilll for a fatality which occurred nearly two years ago.

On March 28th 2022 an electrician was repairing a debarking machine at the Resolute sawmill in Ignace.

Prior to the incident the victim and a maintenance team locked out the machine as per the company’s written procedure.

However while positioned inside the machine alone the rollers, slowly and unexpectedly, moved trapping and fatally injuring the worker.

An investigation by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development found Resolute’s written lockout procedure was “inadequate to protect the worker from the hazard of the infeed rollers and drive gears moving while they were working on the machine. Not all sources of energy were identified and controlled and the verification procedure did not test all sources of hazardous energy.”

The company plead guilty on November 28th of last year in addition to the $500k fine, a 25 percent victim fine surcharge, as required by law, was also imposed.