It has been almost four years since Tracey Phan's father died at a mushroom farm near Vancouver, one of three workers killed when toxic gas leaked into a small shed on the site.
An investigation by WorkSafe B.C., the province's workers' compensation board, later identified a litany of violations that contributed to the deaths, and the farms owners were fined hundreds of thousands dollars after pleading guilty to breaking occupational health and safety laws.
But Phan says she still feels the justice system has failed her father, Michael Phan. No one was ever sent to jail, and even the fines haven't been fully paid by the now-bankrupt farm.
"I just feel like I'm going nowhere with all this - I've seen no change at all," Phan told a news conference in Vancouver on Tuesday, after she and several other people whose family members were victims of workplace accidents met with the province's justice and labour ministers.
"I just really want the loophole in our system to be filled. Nobody should be committing these acts and then file bankruptcy and get away with it."
Phan and other family members representing five separate workplace accidents joined the British Columbia Federation of Labour in the meeting Tuesday. It was designed to highlight what the federation describes as lax enforcement of Criminal Code provisions on negligent employers.
Federation president Jim Sinclair says the mushroom farm accident is just one of many examples of the legal system failing to throw the book at negligent employers.
Sinclair said the Crown should appoint a dedicated prosecutor to deal with serious workplace accidents and the police should be brought in to investigate any incident in which a worker is severely injured or killed. He also said the police must be properly trained to investigate occupational laws.
