The worker was making a batch of paint. It is the same job that gets done every day at coating plants across Ontario. Measure, load, mix, repeat.
On April 29, 2024, that routine ended in a death. A worker at the Pigments Services Canada plant in Mississauga was fatally injured while operating a paint mixing machine. The charge that followed was a guarding charge.
What Happened
Pigments Services Canada Inc. operates as Monteith, a paint and specialty coatings manufacturer at 2615 Wharton Glen Avenue in Mississauga, Ontario. On the day of the incident, the worker was creating a batch of paint and operating a paint mixing machine to do it.
The worker was fatally injured while operating that machine. The bulletin says no more than that about how it happened. What the Ministry charged was a failure to carry out the guarding requirement in section 24 of the Industrial Establishments regulation, and a failure to ensure the measures and procedures required for the safe operation of that machinery were carried out.
Pigments Services Canada Inc. pleaded guilty on September 23, 2025. We want to be plain about this. It was a fatality. A worker went in to make paint and did not come home. Everything that follows is about making sure the next person does.
What the Law Says
The company was convicted for failing to carry out the measures set out in section 24 of R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 851, the Industrial Establishments regulation, which governs the guarding and safe operation of machinery, contrary to sections 25(1)(c) and 66(1) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Section 66(1) is the offence and penalty provision, the one that sets the maximum fine on conviction. The Ministry cited it as part of the charge, so it is published here as charged.
Section 24 requires that where a machine, prime mover or transmission equipment has an exposed moving part that may endanger the safety of any worker, it be equipped with and guarded by a guard or other device that prevents access to the moving part.
Basically, what this means is simple: if a part of a machine moves and can hurt someone, it must be guarded. Not most of the time. Not only when a supervisor is watching. Every time the machine can run. A paint mixer with a moving part a worker can reach is exactly the kind of hazard section 24 exists to cover.
The court fined Pigments Services Canada Inc. $150,000 plus the mandatory 25% victim fine surcharge.
Three Things This Case Teaches Ontario Employers
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A moving part you can reach is a fatality waiting to happen. Shafts, paddles, augers, and drive couplings do not need to be fast to kill. They need to be reachable. Walk every mixer, blender, and vat in your plant and ask one question: can a worker, or a worker's clothing, reach a moving part while the machine runs. If the answer is yes, that machine is not safe to operate.
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One unguarded machine usually means more. Guarding gaps are rarely a single oversight. They are a sign the guarding program itself is missing. Inventory every machine, assess every exposed moving part, and fix them as a batch, not one complaint at a time.
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Guarding is not the operator's job to improvise. The duty sits with the employer to build the guard into the machine and the procedure before the worker ever starts. Do not lean on training that tells people to keep their distance from a moving part. Put a physical barrier there, so distance is enforced by steel and not by memory.
Go stand at your mixing station today. Watch a full cycle, from loading through to the machine coming to rest. Follow every moving part with your eyes and find each point where a hand, a sleeve, or a drawstring could reach it. Then ask your maintenance lead one thing: show me the guard that covers that part, and show me the procedure that keeps it in place. What they show you, and what they cannot, will tell you whether your plant is one bad reach away from the same court bulletin.