'No further details are available at this time'
A male worker was injured and emergency services were called to Can Art Aluminum Extrusion’s Lakeshore, Ont., facility on Oct. 28, 2026 — prompting an investigation by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development at a plant that carries a prior OHSA conviction on its regulatory record.
Essex County OPP was contacted around 4 p.m. on Oct. 28 to assist Essex-Windsor EMS for the injured male at the company’s facility on Jutras Street in Lakeshore, AM800 News reported. The ministry confirmed it was notified of the incident the same day and dispatched an inspector to the scene, according to CTV News. No details about the cause or circumstances of the incident have been confirmed by any source.
“As the investigation is ongoing, no further details are available at this time,” the ministry said in a statement provided to both CTV News and AM800 News. The ministry has not indicated whether any compliance orders or stop-work orders have been issued, nor has it provided a timeline for completing the investigation.
Can Art Aluminum Extrusion has not made any public comments about the incident as of publication time, and no public statement has been issued by the company. The condition and status of the injured worker have not been confirmed publicly.
Prior regulatory record
The Oct. 28 incident is not the first time the ministry has investigated a workplace injury at this facility. On Aug. 20, 2022, a worker at the same Jutras Street plant was operating a saw to cut aluminum extrusions when conveyor belt rollers on the post-cut side malfunctioned. To keep the extrusions moving, the worker pushed them manually down the conveyor and was struck by the gauge head — a mechanical steel plate designed to clamp the extrusions at a pre-determined cutting point. COS previously reported on the full regulatory outcome of that case: Can Art Aluminum fined after conveyor belt worker injury at Lakeshore plant.
The company pleaded guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice in Windsor. Justice of the Peace Susan Hoffman imposed a $55,000 fine on June 14, 2024, with a 25% victim fine surcharge also levied under the Provincial Offences Act. The ministry found Can Art had failed to ensure measures prescribed under section 24 of Ontario Regulation 851 (Industrial Establishments) were carried out at the workplace, contrary to section 25(1)(c) of the OHSA. At that time, the company stated it had voluntarily enhanced its health and safety systems and implemented additional accident prevention initiatives following the 2022 injury.
The Oct. 28 incident also falls within a period of significant operational expansion at the Lakeshore site. Can Art received $5 million in federal funding through FedDev Ontario in October 2024 to expand its aluminum parts manufacturing capacity for the electric vehicle market, according to the Government of Canada. The company reportedly opened a new Lakeshore facility in June 2026, adding three presses to its operations — meaning the expanded plant had been running for approximately five months at the time of the October incident.
What the investigation could mean for similar operations
The ministry has not confirmed whether any compliance or stop-work orders have been issued in connection with the Oct. 28 incident. Under the OHSA, inspectors attending a reported workplace injury hold authority to issue both — and stop-work orders remain in effect until an employer satisfies the inspector that the workplace is safe for workers to return. Where an investigation identifies systemic guarding or equipment failures, the resulting orders can require facility-wide corrective action rather than remediation limited to a single point of injury.
A second emergency response at the same site — following a prior guilty plea and a stated commitment to enhanced safety systems — will lead OHS professionals to ask whether those post-2022 enhancements proved adequate and were properly sustained over time. As COS has reported, machine guarding failures in Ontario’s metals-manufacturing sector continue to produce serious injuries and significant penalties, as seen in the recent case of an Ontario sheet metal manufacturer fined $50,000 after a worker was critically injured by an unguarded press in a prosecution brought under the same regulatory sections.
OHS professionals in extrusion, metal-forming, and related operations would be well advised to review their machine-guarding inventories, equipment commissioning records, and emergency response procedures — particularly at facilities that have undergone recent operational expansion. For those seeking clarity on the scope of inspectors’ powers in a reactive investigation versus a proactive inspection, understanding the difference between an OHSA inspection and a ministry investigation outlines what employers can expect at each stage.
