Prince Albert man looking for proper compensation after workplace accident

The incident happened when McKay was working for Flatlanders Scaffolding, which was set to work in unit six of the power station. While working in that unit, a SaskPower supervisor asked McKay and his colleague to check out something in unit seven that was to be worked on in the future.

While unit six had been shut down properly to allow McKay and his colleague to work, unit seven had not. Electrical currents were still active and non-trained workers were not supposed to be in the area.

“He told us to measure the job and take pictures, as many as we want. Just don’t touch anything he said, and I never did. I put a tape measure in the air and they think it broke and fell over and hit it, but it didn’t.”

It was there that the electricity in the power plant arced onto the tape measure McKay was holding and he was hit with more than enough electricity to kill someone. His coworker helped extinguish the fire burning on the clothes McKay was wearing. He suffered third degree burns and was taken to the hospital in Sandy Bay, and three hours later he was flown to the burn unit in Edmonton.

From there, McKay was put into a medically induced coma to keep him alive. The next five months were spent skin grafting, attending physiotherapy sessions, and relearning how to do everything from walking to drinking out of a cup to try and getting McKay back to some level of normal.

“When he got out of the hospital, he was in there for five months and he had been laid up for so long, he had to relearn how to do everything,” said Blayne’s wife, Jackie. “Because when he was holding the tape measure, he had such extreme damage to his hands and arms, both of them, that when we got out of the hospital his left hand and arm were functioning, but he didn’t even have enough strength to push the button on the car to roll down the window.”

Blayne’s recovery journey has him still doing physiotherapy five times a week, twice a week in Saskatoon, eye surgery in Manitoba, and he’s gone to Edmonton for a specialized nerve rehab facility three times since. He’s gotten himself to a point where he can use his right hand again, but only for limited periods of time.

SaskPower plead guilty to the two following charges.

Being an employer at a place of employment, fail to provide any information, instruction, training, and supervision that is necessary to protect the health and safety of workers at work as required by section 3-1(c) of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, 2020, resulting in the serious injury of a worker, namely Blayne McKay, contrary to subsections 3-78(g) and 3-79 of The Saskatchewan Employment Act.
Fail to ensure that no worker works and no equipment is used or operated within the minimum distance from any exposed energized electrical conductor set out in column 1 of Table 19 of the Appendix as required by section 30-16(4) of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, 2020, resulting in the serious injury of a worker, namely Blayne McKay, contrary to subsections 3-78(g) and 3-79 of The Saskatchewan Employment Act.

There are two possible outcomes ahead.

The first was suggested by SaskPower’s lawyer, where the crown corp would pay a $200,000 fine along with a $80,000 surcharge. The other option was suggested by McKay’s lawyer, a crown-appointed prosecutor. SaskPower would pay a $500,000 fine along with a $200,000 surcharge, but in either case, McKay and his family would not see a cent of that money.

With worker’s compensation not even covering half of McKay’s previous salary, his wife Jackie having to go without a job to take care of her husband for months, and the fact that McKay himself will never be able to work in construction again, the family does not feel that either sentence will be proper restitution.

“The whole time, they never even called once to see if I survived or anything. I’m in the hospital, they didn’t call to see if my family needed anything. They were the ones that hurt me. Their fault, I was never supposed to be in there. They don’t have the human decency to call me.”

If their court case was to continue playing out the way it is, SaskPower will pay their fine to the Saskatchewan Government and none of that money will be received by the McKay family. During his coma, Jackie had accepted worker’s compensation for Blayne, but thinks that shouldn’t stop them from receiving compensation.

“As soon as you accept workers compensation, you waive that right. I mean, why? Why aren’t victims entitled to some of that? That’s the real frustrating part.”

Blayne added, “I put in my victim impact statement that I wanted to get trained by SaskPower to do that shift. They should teach me how to do it and I should be able to do surprise audits on them and see how many they passed.”

While there has been a lot of negative emotions around this whole situation, the McKays said there is one good thing that has come out of all of this: the support of McKay’s family. Blayne has two sisters that are both nurses who helped immensely, and Jackie could not have been more appreciative of having that support network behind her.

“I was there every day and then his family took turns. Every week a couple of different people would come, and we took turns at the hospital the second we were allowed to see him. We were there till late at night till he went to bed that he was never alone, even when he was in a coma.”

Court has adjourned McKay’s case until October 31 where the prosecution and the defence will decide via video conference on what fines will need to be paid.

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panews@pattisonmedia.com

by Nick Nielsen

Prince Albert man looking for proper compensation after workplace accident

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