George Heyman Speaks to Bill 35 — Workers Compensation Amendment Act

Описание: MLA George Heyman: This is an important issue to speak to. It's an important bill to speak to. I wish, as I'll point out in my statements, that I could see a lot more in this bill of worth to speak to. But it is important to talk about some of the measures that this bill addresses as well as some of the measures that it doesn't address.
Let me begin by referencing some statements of the minister. The minister said in her remarks that the provisions in this bill — in response to the inquest, in response to the tragedies that befell the workers at Babine and Lakeland and their families — are the least we can do and seem like very little. Nothing that anyone could do in this Legislature or anywhere else could return the individuals who lost their lives to their families or return to those individuals the life that was taken from them.
It saddens me that in many ways, in fact, this bill is the least we can do in a very real sense. There's much more that could have been done. There's much more that should have been done and, frankly, much more that should not have been done many years ago that set the stage for the kind of workplace culture, the kind of lack of a meaningful safety culture in so many workplaces around British Columbia, that could lead to the kinds of conditions where employers cut corners, where they took chances, where they hoped that they could get away without taking the strongest precautionary measures they could take.