Horizon admits to Chalmers asbestos offences
Health authority changes pleas to guilty to two of four Occupational Health and Safety Act charges alleging it placed employees at risk of exposure over course of five years
The Horizon Health Network admitted Thursday to two workplace safety violations involving failures to protect workers from exposure to asbestos at Fredericton’s hospital.
Regional Health Authority B, better known as Horizon, pleaded not guilty last month to four charges laid by WorkSafeNB under the Occupational Health and Safety Act over asbestos exposure risk at the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital.
The case was set over to Thursday for a case-management conference and to schedule trial dates.
However, court heard instead the matter had been resolved.
Jeff Carter, Horizon’s vice-president of capital assets, operations and infrastructure, pleaded guilty to two of the four charges on behalf of the anglophone health authority Thursday.
Those counts were that Horizon failed to adopt the code of practice entitled A Code of Practice for Working with Materials Containing Asbestos in New Brunswick and that it failed to acquaint an employee with any hazard with regard to the handling of asbestos, both between Nov. 7, 2017 and Oct. 6, 2022.
Crown prosecutor Rachel Anstey and defence lawyer Jessica Bungay both said they weren’t prepared to proceed to sentencing Thursday, so Judge Natalie LeBlanc set sentencing over to Jan. 29.
It’s expected the Crown will withdraw two other related WorkSafeNB charges - that the health authority failed to inform workers of the presence of asbestos and that it failed to take reasonable precautions to protect workers from exposure - at the time of sentencing.
Asbestos was detected in restricted areas of the Chalmers hospital issue, the provincial workplace-safety watchdog previously reported, and that the public at large weren’t potentially exposed.
The area where asbestos was found was described as an “interstitial space” between floors in the hospital, only a limited number of employees faced risk of exposure during the course of their work.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.