(Montreal) The CNESST issued no less than 25 statements of offense to Village Vacances Valcartier, after noting that more than a hundred young people under the age of 14 were working there without signed parental authorization and after a young worker was seriously injured there last June.
The Standards, Equity, Health and Safety Commission issued 23 statements of offense in connection with the Labor Standards Act and two related to occupational health and safety.
The Commission had carried out these checks on the work of young people after it had investigated a work accident, in June 2022, during which a young person under the age of 14 had suffered serious injuries to the head and upper body.
In this context, it had noted that the staff there included more than 175 workers under the age of 14 and that for a hundred of them, the employer had no signed parental authorization.
The injured young worker was part of a team that had to remove dead leaves from the camping spaces, then go to empty the trailer in a laydown area. The youngster was standing in the cargo box and while turning he was ejected, then struck and crushed by the trailer.
At the end of its investigation, the CNESST retains two causes for this accident: the fact that the young person stood up in the loading box of the UTV and the lack of training and supervision of new workers.
As regards violations of the Labor Standards Actthe amount of fines ranges from $600 to $1,200 for a first offense and from $1,200 to $6,000 for a repeat offense.