The conduct of the Crown lawyers in the Gulick sawmill charges by the Ministry of Labour has been officially brought to the attention of the Ontario Attorney General. "The Ministry of Labour should not be about notches on a gun, but making Ontario safer," MPP John Yakabuski told The Working Forest. The labour ministry dropped all four charges against the sawmill near Barry’s Bay, Ontario after two years of attacking the company.
Mr. Yakabuski has joined with MPP Randy Hillier in raising the issue in the legislature prior to Christmas, and on January 21 called for a formal criminal investigation into allegations of wrongdoing in the recent crown case against Gulick Forest Products by the labour ministry. In 2007 four charges were laid by the labour ministry against the 50 year operating Gulick Forest Products of Palmer Rapids.
In those 50 years, the sawmill never had an accident resulting in major loss time-EVER," said Grant Gulick. The employee in question did not press charges and had since returned to work. "The Ministry of Labour lawyers told us we were either lucky or dishonest" in covering up the accidents in those 50 years. "I had to remember my Christian upbringing when those accusations were made against our family sawmill. Safety was taken very seriously at the sawmill."
The debarker in the accident was CSA approved. The Gulicks were prepared to plead guilty to a lesser charge and a subsequent small fine for not installing a guard where a sufficient guard already existed. Most companies, he believes, will pay the fines rather than defend themselves against Ministry of Labour charges. However, the fines imposed were so severe that Grant Gulick said they "couldn’t afford to go to court, but could not afford not to go to court." Gulicks wanted to pay something and not admit to something that they were not guilty of, and not be sunk in the process. They began by defending themselves, but quickly saw the antics of the Ministry were forcing them to hire lawyers.
The forest products company saw themselves as a ‘north of highway 7 business who could not defend themselves, and would be another star in the crown of the lawyers who would hide beneath the labour ministry mantra," said Gulick. It was not an issue of right or wrong, but when the company would cave.
During the investigation the ministry lawyers visited the sawmill employee at his home. The lawyers delivered the employee’s statement demanding that he memorize and quote it. The employee recognized the inaccuracy of the statement and refused it. The ministry in a surprise court move called into question the memory of the witness as unreliable and dropped the charges after 2 years.
Renfrew county MPP John Yakabuski, who followed his father in politics, says he has never seen a government more determined to damage an industry for the sake of Toronto votes. "It has no regard for this icon of Ontario and Canada, the forest industry. They are doing what they can to damage it."
The third generation mill operation was levied with four charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act stemming from an injury to an employee at the mill in September 2007. The worker recovered from his injuries and was able to return to work. He was later laid off along with several other mill workers due to tough economic times. The Gulicks maintained there wasn’t anything they could have done to prevent the accident from happening. It was a freak accident.
Almost one year after the charges were laid, the Crown made an offer to the company. If the Gulick sawmill pleaded guilty to one charge and paid a $65,000 fine, plus a hefty victim surcharge, for a total of more than $80,000, the remaining three charges would be dropped.
Maintaining their innocence and charging the ministry with using strong-arm tactics, the Gulick family dug in their heels and set out to defend themselves in court.
The ministry’s Crown counsel, Linda Chen of Toronto, withdrew the offer and prepared to prosecute the company. Four days were set aside for the trial in October but it was adjourned at the last minute because of some late evidence the Crown planned to introduce. A conviction on each charge could have cost the company up to one-half million dollars each.
Grant Gulick declares that they are a company of loggers, not lawyers yet they should claim to be both. In 2002, Gulicks faced charges of noncompliance to work orders issued by the Ministry of the Environment. That was in relation to piles of sawdust and wood bark on their premises. After several court appearances, many sleepless nights and numerous workplace interruptions the company challenged the MOE and won that government imposed battle.
The sawmill company is claiming costs for this case; however, the court has deferred that decision to a different level of process.
The Working Forest
newspaper has covered the Gulick sawmill case for several years on the weekly electronic edition, thanks to the Eganville Leader newspaper. ◊