Ministry, police investigating the incident
A truck driver has died at an industrial warehouse in Vaughan, Ont., and Ontario's labour ministry has opened an occupational health and safety investigation into the death.
Emergency crews were called to 9501 Highway 50 shortly after 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 9, after the City of Vaughan said Vaughan Fire and Rescue Service was dispatched to an industrial accident at the site.
York Region paramedics said they assessed a patient at the scene who had no vital signs and was not taken to hospital, according to a CBC News report.
As of Oct. 14, the driver's name and age, the employer involved and the circumstances of the death had not been made public.
Ministry and police investigating
The Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development said in an emailed statement that it was notified of a fatal workplace incident involving a truck driver, CBC reported.
The ministry said an inspector attended the scene and that its investigation is continuing.
CTV News also reported that York Regional Police are also investigating. And Toronto police are assisting the ministry, according to CBC.
Reporting and scene-preservation rules
Under section 51 of Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), an employer must notify the ministry when a worker is killed or critically injured from any cause at a workplace.
Since 2021, the contents of the written report an employer must file after a fatality have been set out in a single regulation, O. Reg. 420/21 (Government of Ontario).
Section 51(2) of the Act prohibits anyone from altering the scene of a fatal or critical-injury incident until an inspector releases it (Mondaq, summarizing an Ontario Court of Appeal decision on the section 51 duty).
Vehicle incidents and past prosecutions
The ministry has not said how the driver died. Motor vehicle incidents were the leading cause of work-related deaths in Ontario in every year of the preceding decade, according to Workplace Safety and Insurance Board figures cited in a COS report on two Ontario firms fined after a truck struck a worker.
In Vaughan, Accuristix was fined $125,000, plus a 25% victim fine surcharge, after a worker was fatally struck by a truck pulling away from a loading dock at its warehouse on Jan. 29, 2018. The ministry found no barriers, warning signs or other safeguards were in place, as required by section 20 of Regulation 851 (Industrial Establishments).
Regulation 851 has also been central to other Ontario prosecutions, including the case in which a Toronto waste facility was fined $125,000 after a worker was killed by a reversing truck. The ministry said there were no traffic control procedures at the site and no signaller directing the vehicle (COS).
In a separate case, Janco Steel Ltd. was fined $200,000 after a forklift fatally struck a worker who had stepped backward into an interior driveway while offloading a steel coil from a transport truck (COS).
There is no indication that any of these earlier cases is connected to the Vaughan death.
