Editorial Ontario’s mines safer

It costs mining companies a bundle funnelling money into Ontario’s Workers Compensation Board, but it’s a social cost that, like motherhood, has its own imperative of need and necessity.

The board, in turn, passes part of that money over to safety associations in the province, funding them with something in the order of $34 million to spend on safety programs and safety education within their respective industries.

One of the most successful of these associations, we’re happy to note, is the Mines Accident Prevention Association Ontario (MAPAO), which just last week reported in this newspaper that the mines in Ontario are safer now than they have ever been. The association says for instance that last year injuries resulting in lost time for workers dropped to a rate of 4.7 per 200,000 employee hours, (a 22% improvement over the previous year) and that the rate has been dropping steadily since 1980 when it stood at 7.8.

Undoubtedly that success has been due in large measure to the safety programs the mining companies themselves have instituted and continue to work hard maintaining and improving, wherever possible.

It is also though, according to the MAPAO’s president, Robert Brailey, partly the result of the association’s mine safety audit system, in which qualified “auditors” from the industry itself spend several days evaluating a mine’s safety programs and procedures, eventually rating each mine, in a written report, on a scale of one star to five stars.

The 5-star rating system, Mr Brailey contends, has been working as an effective incentive in the mine safety area.

There is a cloud, though, and a black one, over this otherwise- encouraging story. While the injury rate has been dropping steadily, the fatality rate has not been dropping proportionately and it’s apparently a phenomenon that the MAPAO can’t adequately explain. “We don’t know why,” Mr Brailey acknowledges.

In an effort to stem the tide, the association has embarked on a research program, particularly focussing on fatalities from transportation accidents, which it hopes will produce some answers to a serious problem.

Meantime it appears that the MAPAO and safety associations representing other industries in Ontario have been attacked by opposition members in the provincial legislature for their poor record on safety.

These people need to check their facts, at least as far as the mining industry is concerned.