Jail Time For Health & Safety

 In a landmark decision released in January 2016, the Ontario Court has sentenced a project manager to 3.5 years in prison in relation to a scaffold collapse that many will remember having occurred in Toronto on Christmas Eve in 2009. Vadim Kazenelson, an employee and project manager with Metron Construction, was convicted of four counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Under Kazenelson's supervision, six workers were allowed to board and work on a swing stage equipped with only two lifelines. By law, every worker on such a stage must be secured to their own lifeline. Only one of the workers were attached to a lifeline when the swing stage failed and collapsed, resulting in a fall of more than 100 feet. Miraculously, one of the five workers who fell survived the fall, but the four others died. The one worker secured to the lifeline survived unharmed and was pulled in to saftey.