Tissue manufacturer Irving Consumer Products Ltd. has been fined 100,000 Canadian dollars by a court in the Canadian province of Ontario following a serious accident involving a temporary worker. On top of that comes the mandatory 25 percent victim fine surcharge under the Provincial Offences Act, which goes to a provincial fund for victims of crime. The incident occurred on September 13, 2024, at the company’s tissue plant at 1551 Weston Road in Toronto.
What happened?
On the day in question, a forklift driver delivered a stack of four pulp bales to a wire-cutting table. However, the stand at that table was designed to hold a maximum of two bales. The top two bales tipped over and fell. A worker hired through a temporary employment agency, who was operating the wire-cutting machine, was critically injured as a result. Further details about the nature of the injury have not been made public.
Irving Consumer Products pleaded guilty on September 11, 2026, before the Provincial Offences Court in Toronto. The company was convicted of violating section 25(1)(c) of the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) — an employer’s general duty of care — in combination with section 45(b) of Ontario Regulation 851 (Industrial Establishments Regulation), which requires that material on a stacking stand be placed so that it cannot topple over. Justice of the Peace Bentley Springer imposed the fine; Crown Counsel Alicia Gordon-Fagan acted on behalf of the Crown.
Findings of the investigation
The investigation by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development revealed a structural training problem. Workers hired after 2019 turned out not to have been trained in the safety procedure limiting the wire-cutting table to two bales. On the shop floor, up to four bales were routinely placed on the table, double the safe limit. The ministry notes more generally that new staff, especially during their first month on the job, face an increased risk of injury.
Company actions
According to the reporting, Irving Consumer Products carried out a series of improvements at the Toronto site on its own initiative after the accident. The company redesigned the work area around the wire-cutting table and purchased a new wire-cutting machine. These are measures taken by the company itself, not obligations imposed by the court. Besides the fine, the source does not mention any court-ordered corrective measures, such as mandatory training or external audits.
Context
The Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act is the central workplace safety law of the Canadian province of Ontario and places a general duty of care on employers to take reasonable steps to protect the safety of their workers. The accompanying Regulation 851 specifies concrete obligations for industrial establishments, including rules for stacking and storing material. Figures from Workplace Safety North, the WSIB-recognized health and safety association for, among others, Ontario’s forest products and paper sector, show that this risk is not an isolated case: in the pulp, newsprint and specialty papers subsector, contact with objects and equipment — including being struck by falling or moving objects — accounted for 42 percent of all lost-time injuries in 2024, the largest risk category within that sector. This underscores that correct storage and stacking procedures, and structurally training all workers in them, form a core part of safe material handling in heavy industry worldwide — all the more so because new and temporary staff prove especially vulnerable when basic instructions are missing or not passed on.
Source: Irving Consumer Products fined $100,000 after pulp bales critically injure worker, 28 October 2026
Further researched: Workplace Safety North, Forest Products 2024 Pulp, Newsprint & Specialty Papers Health & Safety Snapshot
