Kelowna business owner facing $25K fine says he was following common workplace practice

A Kelowna business owner is facing a $25,000 fine after pleading guilty in court following a workplace incident where an employee fell from scaffolding. 

SSK Construction owner Sarabjeet Khera appeared in a Kelowna courtroom, Aug. 13, facing five charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation.

The charges relate to the incorrect set-up of scaffolding at a West Kelowna construction site in May 2024.

While WorkSafeBC regularly hands out fines and issues stop-work orders for companies breaching safety regulations, it’s highly unusual for companies and their owners to end up in court because of such infractions.

Even the lawyers in the case seemed confused about how to categorize the charges.

“It’s neither a purely administrative matter nor a purely criminal matter, it’s somewhere in between,” defence lawyer Ravneet Singh Arora told the court.

The court heard how SSK Construction were putting stucco on a wood-frame house when the incident occurred.

However, details of the fall were largely vague, as lawyers focused on the technical requirements of the regulations Khera’s company hadn’t followed in constructing the scaffolding.

Crown prosecutor Kevin Marks said scaffolding has to sit on strong wooden planks flat on the ground to stop it sinking.

However, the scaffolding was just placed on small pieces of wood.

“There were no guardrails on the ends of any of the four scaffold sections. There was no ladder to access any level of the system,” the Crown said.

It appears the worker fell trying to climb down from the third section, hit the second section and fell to the ground. It’s unclear how serious his injuries were, but he has since moved to Alberta and was back working.

The Crown said a fall from a scaffolding 20 feet high can lead to a maximum $800,000 fine and six months’ jail. 

The lawyer argued for a $25,000 fine and no jail time.

The Crown pointed out that three months after the incident, Khera was fined $1,250 by WorkSafeBC for having unsafe scaffolding.

“I observed adhesive tape used to secure some connection points,” a WorkSafe incident report read.

A year before the fall, he was sent a warning letter regarding another health and safety issue.

“I’m not aware of any steps that were taken after the fact, by Mr. Khera or SSK, and in fact, three months later, in August of 2024, he gets fined for the same type of offences,” the Crown said.

The court heard how Khera had moved to Canada from India in 2005, and often worked two jobs and drove a taxi to support himself and her family. After years working two jobs, he’d set up his own stucco business.

“He learned what he saw and he learned from what he observed was commonplace in the industry,” the defence lawyer said. “He didn’t go to school for this… he was doing what he observed and what he learned when he spent those initial four years working in the stucco industry.”

The defence lawyer said Khera had received a warning letter about a lack of a fall protection system in 2019, which had no mention of the base of the scaffolding, even though he was using the same method then as when the fall happened.

“He didn’t have a clear understanding that this was something that was deficient in his procedures,” the lawyer said.

Judge Lisa Wyatt didn’t buy it.

“It’s an ignorance of the law (argument) which is no defence,” she said.

Arora argued for a $7,500 fine, saying $25,000 was too steep for a small family business.

But after two hours of legal arguments, court time ran out.

Khera will find out what fine he has to face at another court appearance in the future.