MONTREAL, Que. – A new report from the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), which investigates workplace incidents in Quebec, has concluded that a worker fatality at Montreal’s Champlain Bridge last year could have been avoided. Last Sept. 15, 44-year-old Dany Cléroux, a site foreman with construction firm Groupe TNT, was working on the bridge’s ice-control structure when the platform he was on toppled over, sending him into the St. Lawrence River (COHSN, Sept. 22). The report, released on Aug. 10, identified two primary causes of the accident. First, the workers misused four platform hoists in a way that stopped the platform from moving properly; Cléroux slipped off the platform while trying to untangle a chain, and his fall-arrest gear was not attached to anything. Second, Groupe TNT had no safety protocol in place for platform installation and removal. “Under the law, every employer is required to ensure that work organization as well as equipment, methods and techniques for the work are safe,” stated a CNESST press release about the report. “Employers and workers need to team up to identify hazards and implement ways to eliminate or control them.” CNESST added that it had forwarded the report to l’Association de la construction du Québec and other labour organizations to help prevent similar fatalities.