A city employee who was drunk and sipping vodka from a thermos while operating a backhoe has lost his job, his driver’s licence, and is going to jail for 30 days.

Richard Page, 56, who had worked for the City of Timmins for more than 24 years, was told in Timmins provincial court Tuesday he was lucky he didn’t kill anybody.

“This piece of machinery weighs 10 times more than a small car and the accused was speeding,” Assistant Crown Attorney Wayne O’Hanley told the court.

Judge Ralph Carr was particularly disturbed by the fact Page is a repeat offender. This was his fourth time being convicted of impaired driving, though his most recent conviction prior to this was 11 years ago.

“This is beyond the pale,” said Carr. “This is outrageous behaviour … You are very fortunate that the results were not catastrophic.”

The judge noted Page, at the time, was being paid by city taxpayers “to make the community a safer place” by removing snow from the city’s streets.

Meanwhile, he was operating a backhoe through city streets with nearly three times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood system

Page pleaded guilty in Timmins provincial court to impaired driving and is prohibited from operating a motor vehicle in Canada for the next 18 months.

Court heard Page was working on the night of March 26, operating a backhoe to clear snow from Timmins’ city streets, when police received a call from an anonymous citizen about a drunk driver operating heavy machinery.

The prosecutor, O’Hanley, said police attended the scene at 10:20 p.m. and saw a backhoe “travelling at a high rate of speed” along Vimy Avenue and then stopping abruptly halfway into the Mountjoy Street South intersection.

Police followed as the backhoe made its way south and then ordered the driver to pull over.

When initially questioned by police, Page said he had not consumed any alcohol that evening.

However, O’Hanley said the officers’ suspicions were aroused by a strong odour of alcohol on Page’s breath and by the fact he was taking unusually long pauses while responding to police questions.

He failed a roadside screening test and was taken to the Timmins police station, where officers noted he swayed back and forth on his feet.

While at the station, officers opened his thermos they had retrieved from the backhoe and detected an “immediate odour of pure vodka,” said O’Hanley.

Both the Crown’s office and the defence had worked out a plea bargain and were jointly recommending a sentence of 30 days in jail and a one-year suspension of Page’s driver’s licence.

Defence lawyer Ted Tichinoff said Page already paid a severe price over this incident by losing his job of 24 years.

Tichinoff said his client admitted a problem with alcohol and was now taking steps to treat it by enrolling in counselling.

The judge felt the sentence being recommended was very light under the circumstances.

While Carr reluctantly agreed to sentence Page to 30 days in jail, he added an extra half a year to the driver’s licence suspension, handing down a driving ban of 18 months.

“That’s a break for you,” the judge told Page.