More than three and a half years after six people were killed in one of the deadliest workplace incidents in Ottawa’s history — a 2022 explosion at an Ottawa tank truck manufacturing facility — Ottawa police have laid criminal charges against the company’s owner, Neil Greene.
The 54-year-old is facing six counts of criminal negligence causing the deaths of Eastway Tank, Pump and Meter employees Rick Bastien, Danny Beale, Kayla Ferguson, Matt Kearney, Etienne Mabiala and Russell McLellan, as well as one count of criminal negligence causing bodily harm to employee Tanner Clement.
Of the deceased victims, all but Kearney were killed in the blast itself at the family-run business off Merivale Road in south Ottawa on Jan. 13, 2022. Kearney died of his injuries in hospital the following day.
Greene was arrested and charged Thursday morning, then released on a promise to appear in court.
Investigators first seized evidence during a search warrant at Greene’s offices two years ago. The charges come after police mistakes, defence manoeuvres and ensuing legal battles brought the investigation to a halt for many months, and nearly derailed it completely.
CBC News made those battles public last year after successfully fighting in court to report on the contents of affidavits filed by police in 2023 — also known as informations to obtain, or ITOs — which investigators wrote to convince judges to order multiple search warrants in the case.
In an emailed statement Thursday, Greene’s lawyers Kirstin Macrae and Mark Ertel wrote that the “events of January 13, 2022, were a horrible tragedy for all concerned,” and noted it’s been three and a half years since then.
“There was no evidence of criminal negligence then. None in the next year of thorough ministry investigation with experts including the Ontario Fire Marshall. None in the full year the matter was before the courts and resolved as a regulatory violation, not a criminal offence. None for more than a year after the case was resolved,” the statement reads.
“Our position is that there never was and is not now evidence to justify criminal negligence allegations. Public pressure is not a substitute for evidence.”
Drone footage shows extensive damage after Merivale Road fire
In January 2023, the Ministry of Labour charged Greene and the company with three identical provincial offences under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) in relation to the blast.
In April 2024, Greene and the company each pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that diesel fuel used for wet testing trucks was not contaminated with gasoline or any other flammable liquid or substance. (Wet testing involves loading a tanker with diesel or gasoline in order to calibrate equipment.)
The company also pleaded guilty to failing to provide adequate information, instruction and supervision to workers on safe fuel storage and handling procedures to protect employees from the hazard of contaminated diesel fuel.
An Ontario Court judge ordered Greene and Eastway to pay a total of $850,000 in fines and fees. The corporate fine was the highest ever issued against a company of Eastway’s size in the history of the OHSA, and the fine against Greene was among the highest ever for an individual charged under the act.
The Ottawa police criminal investigation did not begin until nearly a year after the explosion. The arson unit had initially determined the explosion and fire hadn’t been deliberate. The ministry then took the lead, a police affidavit states.
Things changed in December 2022, when the ministry shared its conclusions and said it would be laying charges. An arson unit staff sergeant emailed an inspector to say a criminal investigation may be warranted, and soon after, it began.
From January to July 2023, police conducted about 30 interviews with current and former Eastway employees, and prepared documents for production orders and search warrants, case manager Det.-Sgt. Michael Cathcart wrote in an affidavit.
CBC News reporting on those search warrants over the past year revealed that investigators believe a chain of negligent acts caused the fatal explosion. They included improper cleaning, a lack of written procedures, diluting fuel and failing to ground and bond the truck.
The criminal allegations have not been tested in court, and Greene remains innocent of them.
On July 26, 2023, police executed their first search warrants at an office space in Kanata North that Greene had been using after the explosion, among other locations.
That’s when the legal battles began.
For one thing, police admitted they seized more than two dozen boxes of gasoline-smelling, weather-warped paper records illegally, outside the scope of the original search warrant. (“Documents” had mistakenly been omitted from the list of items to be searched, police said.)
For another, Greene’s defence team alleged the seized material contained information subject to solicitor-client privilege — a cornerstone rule in law that keeps private any communication between a person and their lawyers.
To deal with the privilege issue, a contract was eventually drawn directing independent counsel to sift through everything and weed out any privileged communications.
A separate search warrant in September 2023 allowed investigators to re-seize everything they took from Greene that summer, and to expand the date range of their search by more than five years: from June 2015 to March 2022.
CBC has since learned the date range was expanded to see how Eastway operated before, during and after the tenure of an employee who had improved safety at the company, and was later terminated.
The defence also alleged that police had no grounds to believe an offence may have occurred when they filed production orders and search warrants, and asked for a declaration that Greene’s Charter rights were violated. (The lawyers abandoned a bid to get all the data and documents seized by police returned to Greene, and to stop police from using anything they seized.)
In March, a Superior Court judge declined to declare that Greene’s rights had been breached, citing insufficient evidence.
Greene’s first court appearance is scheduled for October.
