How safe?

A recent spate of mine fatalities has many people wondering just how safe Canada’s mines are. Critics say the industry is killing off miners at an alarming ra te while others claim that a miner could hardly be safer, even if working in a hospital. One of the strongest critics of mine safety is Sudbury politician Elie Martel. He’ll tell you about his old friend, Dick Kerr of Garson, Ont., a miner who last year took a chance on an 85% bonus at a Sudbury mine. Kerr’s crew had left and he had stayed behind to do some cleanup work. That extra diligence cost him his life when the back fell in, killing Kerr of rock.

On the other hand, a strong believer that mining in Canada has a proud record of improving safety conditions is Bruce Campbell, manager of technical services for the Ontario Mining Association. He comes armed with statistics that show a dramatic 69% reduction in lost-time accidents in Ontario mines in the past 10 yea rs. Moreover the injury rate for mining is lower than most other industries and lower than the average of all industries reporting to the Industrial Accident Pr evention Association (iapa).

Just who is right when it comes to mine safety in this country? Are there more mining accidents than necessary, or is mining fast becoming a shining example o f industrial safety? The answer is probably not clearcut, but there is no arguin g the fact that mine safety in Canada has made some enormous strides in the past 10 years.

Martel, member of the Ontario legislature for Sudbury East, is the occupationa l health and safety critic for the New Democratic Party. He has some pretty stro ng opinions on safety matters in Ontario’s mining industry and is especially con cerned about the circumstances surrounding the recent deaths of four miners at I nco Ltd.’s Levack nickel-copper mine, near Sudbury. Last April, the miners were doing maintenance work atop a skip at the bottom of a shaft when tons of ore sud denly hurtled out of a loading pocket and crashed down the kilometre-deep shaft. The men were crushed beneath their protective aluminum shield.

At the time, the Levack mine was billed as the safest in North America — the only one in the continent to receive a top rating under the International Safety Rating System.

“What concerns me the most,” says Martel, “is that after that tragedy, I heard of a situation where two men were sent to the bottom of a shaft to repair a pump at the same time that another crew was lowering parts of a jaw crusher down th e same shaft. That doesn’t sound too safe to me.”

While Martel admits that Canadian mines have made great strides in safety over the years, he insists there is still “a helluva long way to go yet.” The advent of bulk mining and its effect on ground control, for instance, give him cause for concern.

Inco Vice-president Roy Aitken insists that mining is struggling against a long-held perception by the public that the occupation is unsafe. It’s a perception that goes back to the days when mine disasters — especially those at coal mines — were common around the world. For many Canadians the Springhill, N.S., disa ster of 1958 still serves as a horrific image of the mining industry. Seventy-fo ur miners died in that disaster.

“But the lost-time injury rate per 200,000 man-hours worked is lower for the Ontario’s mining industry than it is for the province’s forest, construction, tra nsportation, farming and electrical industries. It is even lower than the averag e of all industries reporting to the iapa,” he told the annual meeting of the Mi nes Accident Prevention Association of Ontario in May. In fact, says Aitken, onl y hospitals and pulp-and-paper- makers have lower lost-time injury rates — and then not by much.

Campbell’s statistics show a 69% improvement in safety over the past 10 years, a period during which the lost-time accident rate for industry as a whole dropped by only 17%. And he quickly adds that the incidents of death by accident in O ntario’s mines are virtually the same as in the population of Ontario as a whole.

But Campbell’s case doesn’t sit well with Martel. He says there have been 273 deaths in northern Ontario mines since 1965. “That’s one of the figures they don ‘t like to throw around,” he says. “There have already been 10 mining deaths in Ontario this year, in addition to deaths that occurred in smelters.”

Campbell is quick to counter that the number of mining deaths in Ontario is less than the number of deaths in other industries. Figures obtained from the offi ce of the Coroner of Ontario attributed 12 industrial deaths to mining in 1985, the latest year for which figures are available. During the same year 27 workers were killed in the construction industry, 17 in farming and 32 in other factories and plants.

The success of the mining industry in improving safety isn’t limited to Ontario either. Across Canada miners are staying in one place longer and remaining on the job longer. This increased stability means Canada’s miners are more familiar with their particular workplace and are more aware of safety. Also, most of the country’ miners are now a little older and considerably more experience d — the result of tough times in the industry during the early 1980s when many miners w ith less seniority were laid off. Equipment, too, is much more sophisticated and safer than it was 20, 15 or even 10 years ago. This reflects advances in technology but also an increasingly sophisticated workforce that demands better working conditions.

In May of this year, Ontario’s labor minister, William Wrye, introduced what he called the most rigorous and advanced mining health and safety regulations in Canada. They require:

* each mine to write an assessment of the ground stability of the mine on a annual basis;

* mines to maintain a common core training program for all underground miners;

* each workplace to devise a system for communicating information on safety conditions in the workplace to all shifts and supervisors;

* that illumination of at least 1,500 lux at 1.2 m from the light source be provided in each workplace; and

* each mine to install protective roofs on motorized mine vehicles in new mines to protect operators from falling objects.

In 1980 the death of eight miners at the Belmoral gold mine, near Val d’Or, brought the issue of Quebec mine safety onto the front pages of newspapers. This y ear the issue has resurfaced because of two fires that killed one man and result ed in the closing of Noranda’s Gaspe copper mine, in Murdochville. But Wayne Aal ders, administrative manager for the Quebec Metal Mining Association, says the s ituation in Quebec is almost as good as it is in Ontario. Despite the disasters in Murdochville and Belmoral, he says Quebec’s mining industry is among the best , compared with other industrial sectors. He explains that mine fatalities in Qu ebec have remained relatively constant since 1980 when 12 miners died. In 1986 t here were 11 deaths, including two contractors.

“Quebec’s mining industry has one of the most active safety programs anywhere, ” says Aalders. “The companies that were not performing up to par have been forc ed to put accident prevention programs into place. Under bills 17 and 42 (which deal with accident prevention on an annual basis), these companies have been for ced to submit accident prevention plans to the provincial government.”

Aalders also praises the unions in Quebec, which are deeply involved in matters of safety in the mines. A joint accident prevention association called Sectora l Association is in place with both company and union participation, he says.

At the other end of the country, British Columbia has also seen considerable improvement in mine safety. A major reason has been a shift from underground mini ng to cheaper — and safer — open pit mining. Brian Parrott, director of research for the Mining Association of British Columbia, says there is no question tha t mine safety in the province has improved significantly in recent years.

“The frequency of lost-time accidents has improved dramatically to 3.8
5 per 200,000 man-hours today from around eight in 1979,” he says. “There are fewer men in B.C. working in the more dangerous underground environment. There are about 6,000 coal miners in the province and about 9,000 in metal mining, including 2,20 0 at the Cominco smelter in Trail. That leaves only about 6,800 workers in hard rock mining — which is down from a peak of about 9,000 in 1981.”

Terry Johnson, director of safety for the association, echoes the sentiments of other mining association officials across the country when he says a more stable work force is one very important reason for the improved safety picture in Canadian mines. “There is less migratory manpower. People are staying longer at on e mine and, as a result, are gaining considerably more experience and more safety knowledge.”

The forestry industry in British Columbia suffers far more fatalities (usually as high as 20 per year) than the mining industry in the other provinces combined. So far there has been but one fatality among the province’s miners: a death a t Cominco’s Sullivan mine, at Kimberley.

Johnson also cites what he calls the “ergonomic factor.” Tools and mining equipment are much safer than in past years and machines are much more closely match ed to the individuals who operate them. “In addition there is an ever-increasing safety awareness by both the worker and management. On both sides there is a real professional attitude.”

Nevertheless mining fatalities seem to attract an inordinate amount of attention. The most recent example was the four deaths at the Levack mine. Criminal cha rges were laid against one worker at the mine and charges under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act were laid against Inco and two foremen. Yet, despite those deaths, Inco has enjoyed a good safety record. Its 5-star rating is a testimony to the company’s internationally acknowledged high level of safety.

Perhaps the most convincing argument for improving mine safety is its effect on a company’s profits.

“If you start to sacrifice safety, you just as surely start to increase your costs,” says Graham Ross, Inco’s manager of safety, occcupational health and envi ronment in Sudbury. “Any company with a bad safety record has high costs. Safety and productivity go hand in hand. If people are working safely, they have the time to be productive.”

But credit for improved safety doesn’t belong only to management. In many cases it’s the workers, often through the efforts of their unions, who have led to recognition of safety hazards and improved safety procedures.

“We got the first health and safety committee organized,” says Norm Carriere, a safety officer with the United Steelworkers of America, the union that represe nts most of the organized miners in Canada. “And in most of the big mines, we went beyond committees and now have full-time health and safety representatives.

“There’s a long way to go yet before Canadian mines are totally safe for the workers,” he says, “but I have to admit I have seen a lot of improvements in the past 10-20 years.”

There are legitimate concerns for the future. Martel points to the advent of bulk mining where “super blasts” are causing entire mines to “shake like hell,” a nd poor lighting which, he says, has resulted in 53 miners dying in recent years simply from “falling down holes.”

Mining will never be free from the risk of accidents that cause injury and, sometimes, death. But labor and management — in an alliance that is still evolvin g — are making great strides to minimize those occurences. “We all know there a re risks,” says Aitken. “The mine is a hostile environment. But that is partly t he reason we are so concious of the need for good safety practices.