A Quebec paving-stone manufacturer is set to appear for a sentencing hearing after becoming the first company in Canada to be convicted of criminal negligence causing death as the result of a workplace accident.

In a case that is being followed in boardrooms across the country, Transpave Inc. of Saint-Eustache, north of Montreal, pleaded guilty in Quebec Court in December to a charge stemming from the 2005 death of labourer Steve L'Ecuyer, 23, who was crushed to death by machinery as he tried to clear a backlog of stones on the production line. An investigation by Quebec's health and safety board discovered that a safety device intended to prevent such an accident had been deliberately disabled for most of 2005 and 2004.

The conviction is the first since the federal government amended the Criminal Code in 2004 to make it easier to charge companies for health and safety offences. The amendments were in response to the 1992 Westray mine disaster in Nova Scotia, in which 26 men were killed but no criminal convictions resulted. To read more, please click here.