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Titled "Enforcing the Criminal Code for Workplace Serious Injuries & Deaths", the course provided law enforcement professionals with advanced tools to identify and prosecute senior organizational leadership when systemic safety failures result in worker serious harm or death. The course links safety culture, leadership causation, and criminal liability.
“Senior executives control budgets, shape workplace culture, and ultimately determine whether safety is a priority or a box to check,” said Rob Stewart, spokesperson for JPMF. “When unsafe conditions are incentivized, tolerated, or left uncorrected, these aren’t accidents they’re foreseeable outcomes. And our law has the power to hold those at the top to account.”
From Culture to Criminal Causation
Backed by Sociotechnical Systems (STS) Science, the course introduced a forensic framework that enables investigators to trace safety failures to decisions made in executive suites where budget cuts, production pressures, and cultural normalization often converge to compromise human life. The training aligns with the Criminal Code’s sections 217.1, 21, and 22, which creates a legal duty, and that senior officers can be held criminally accountable as a party to the offence when they fail to take reasonable steps to prevent harm.
Participants analyzed real case law and engaged with STS control diagrams and cultural causal maps that convert vague ideas like “poor culture” into legally admissible evidence of criminal negligence and abetting.
Turning Legal Power into Action
Canada has among the strongest workplace Criminal Code provisions in the Western world but they are rarely enforced. This training is designed to change that by equipping authorities to identify:
• Where corporate shortcuts replaced critical safety controls;
• When leadership decisions signaled tolerance for risk;
• How normalized behaviours meet the legal thresholds for “knowing acquiescence” or “intent to benefit.”
This course is not just about prosecuting accidents it’s about prosecuting choices.
About the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund (JPMF)
The John Petropoulos Memorial Fund works to prevent workplace injuries and fatalities by promoting leadership accountability, system-level prevention, and public education. The Fund honours the legacy of Constable John Petropoulos, who died in the line of duty due to a preventable workplace hazard. His legacy continues to shape our commitment to safer, more accountable workplaces.
Robert Stewart
John Petropoulos Memorial Fund
[email protected]
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