Tour bus company pleads guilty to 2 OHS charges in glacier bus rollover

Brewster Inc. will pay nearly half a million dollars in penalties after one of its glacier tour buses rolled over in Jasper National Park nearly three years ago.

Three people died and more than a dozen others were injured in the Columbia Icefield accident on July 18, 2020.

An Ice Explorer bus, which was carrying two dozen passengers, rolled for about 50 metres down a moraine embankment.

Brewster, initially charged with eight counts under Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Act, has pleaded guilty to two of them: failing to mandate seatbelt usage and failing to control the hazard of a slope.

The first count relates to the driver's safety while the second count relates to the safety of Griva Patel, Kamlesh Patel and Dionne Durocher, who all died in the accident.

The remaining counts have been withdrawn. 

Jasper RCMP announced last year that it would not lay criminal charges in relation to the incident.

Crown counsel Adam May presented a joint sentence submission to Justice Gerald Annetts in a Jasper Court of Justice courtroom on Monday morning. 

Annetts accepted the submission, ordering the company to pay $475,000 in penalties by June 15.

The sum includes a $1,000 fine, $365,000 for a research project at the University of Alberta, and $109,000 for STARS air ambulance.

May said the U of A's research will prevent similar incidents from happening.

"A great amount of good will come out of this," he told the judge.

Seatbelt use

Before it crashed, the bus was on its second trip of the day, carrying tourists to the Athabasca Glacier, about 100 kilometres southeast of Jasper.

A collision report prepared by an RCMP constable said the bus reached an unusually high speed and was not in any forward gear as it was descending the lateral moraine.

The report said the driver negotiated the first curve in the road, but was unable to manage the second one. The bus left the road and rolled over one and a half times.

According to an agreed statement of facts, the Ice Explorer buses did not have passenger seatbelts but they did have driver seat belts. 

The driver, who advised that her belt was not functional at the time but did not identify any problems with it during a pre-trip inspection, was not wearing her seatbelt. 

She was pinned inside the bus and sustained life-altering injuries.

According to the agreed statement of facts, seatbelt usage was discussed in training materials but many Brewster drivers believed wearing them was not required.

Mark Morrison, Brewster's lawyer, said the company spent $2.7 million after the accident to add passenger seatbelts to vehicles and has changed its seatbelt culture.

Slope grade

The RCMP's investigation of the incident found some parts of the lateral moraine road had a grade of 40 per cent. 

In an incident report, an RCMP traffic analyst said the grade exceeded the bus manufacturer's specifications of 36 per cent.

The agreed statement of facts said the company had a comprehensive road maintenance program and monitored the slope daily, but did not take formal measurements regularly. 

The company has since installed inclinometers on service vehicles.

Morrison said the company took full ownership of the incident, provided psychological support to staff, reviewed its safety systems and made changes to procedures.

The company also paid for the bus driver's expenses not covered by WCB, including renovations to her home and a vehicle upgrade. The driver still works for the company on a part-time basis.

Morrison said the company has been conducting glacier tours since 1969 with no injuries or serious safety incidents until July 2020.

"This is a company that is on the very low end of the culpability scale," he said in court.

Victim impact statements

May read four victim impact statements from Griva Patel's family members who were also all on the Ice Explorer.

The family members wrote of scars, daily struggles due to pain, financial losses and fears about the future.

Justice Annetts offered his condolences to the accident victims and their family members. 

He said the company's guilty plea demonstrates remorse and called its actions to improve safety impressive.