Farm workers in Alberta not covered by health and safety legislation, something 1 MLA wants to change
When Calgary Liberal MLA David Swann called on the Alberta government to make changes to its agriculture laws last November, he didn’t think he was being unreasonable.
“Nothing has changed,” Swann says.
He and his fellow advocates had hoped the Alberta government would outline changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) when it released a report from the Alberta Farm Safety Advisory Council report in early March.
“It kind of glossed over the many different options the minister had, but didn't advocate anything but more education, awareness and training programs,” Swann says.
Unlike other provinces, farm workers in Alberta are exempt from the OHSA and, as a result, do not have the right to refuse unsafe work. There is also no legislation requiring employers to maintain Workers' Compensation Board coverage or child labour standards on farms and ranches.
“It's a matter of basic, ethical employment. It's a matter of human rights. It's a matter of reducing injuries and deaths,” he says. “It's a matter of protecting our children.”
The safety of children is truly Swann’s priority.
“I think it's important to ensure that there are laws that restrict paid child workers to certain types of activities that do not expose them to risks that are beyond their ability to manage,” he says. “That doesn't exist at the present time and this blanket exemption from labour and health and safety standards applies to everyone — including paid child farm workers.”
Enforced labour laws would not apply to family-owned farms and restrictions would be put on large commercial producers, Swann clarifies. Farm workers should also be covered by the province’s workers’ compensation board, Swann says.
“Some (farms) optionally take on an insurance policy, some even have worker's compensation board coverage. It's entirely optional,” he says.
Including farm workers under workers’ compensation legislation would actually save the government on health care costs, Swann says.
“This government has spent $374 million on health care services to men and women and children over the last 20 years who are injured in the agricultural operation’” he says. “If we had had mandatory workers' compensation, the owners and the compensation board would have paid for those injuries and rehabilitation, but (it comes out of) the public purse now.”
This change would also benefit individuals who have lost family members to workplace accidents.
“We've highlighted the cases of several people who got nothing after severe injuries and in one case death,” he says.
Lorna Chandler waited six years for compensation after her husband died in an accident on an Alberta farm, says Swann. Because workers are exempt from the province’s compensation board, Chandler had to launch a lawsuit against the feedlot her husband worked for. As a result, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy, displacing around 40 employees.
Swann would also like to see a minimum occupational health and safety standard for Alberta farms
“These operations handle chemicals, they have electrical grids that they work in… and many of them are just put together by a neighbour or somebody who is not certified exposes others to risk,” he says. “Without standards for vehicles, machinery and electrical and chemical activities, we are putting people at risk, which they are really afraid to challenge or to refuse to work in.”
Nova Scotia
Many Nova Scotia farmers are unaware their farm falls under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, according to Trevor Davison, safety co-ordinator at the Nova Scotia Federation of Agriculture, which is based in Bible Hill, N.S.
“At this point, even just getting farmers aware that the occupational health and safety act applies to their farm is basically the point we're at,” Davison says. “We've organized sessions to get farmers to come out where we review the manual with them and get them up to speed on the requirements, but as an industry we're kind of lacking where we should be compared to the construction industry or those types of things. We're definitely behind.”
Davison would like to see different safety laws for farms in Nova Scotia because some of the current rules are difficult for producers to comply with.
“(Farmers would) like to have separate rules because we have issues as far as some of the confined space requirements,” he says. “We're trying to work with the Department of Labour to try to develop some deviations or different codes of practices that should help farmers meet an equivalent level of safety, but not necessarily meet the regulations as they're stated.”
Davison is happy with the province’s decision to review its administrative penalty system, which is essentially a system that financially penalizes an organization or company for workplace injuries and accidents. The current process allows for different penalties to be assigned to the same infraction in different sectors, he says.
“I just think they'll figure out ways of making it more uniform and applicable to the various industries,” he says. “(They plan to) make some changes to it so it's a little bit more of an educational process rather than an enforcement sort of thing.”
Davison says Nova Scotia’s current legislation does a good job, though.
“In certain circumstances, it would be nice to have separate legislation, but at the same time the overall point kind of is for farmer safety,” he says. “So you have to support the idea of farms keeping themselves and their employees safe.”
Ontario
Ontario recently launched its FarmSafe Plan, which was developed for all farms, regardless of size, location or type of operation. The program is intended to allow users to work at their own pace identify hazards, create safety procedures and train farm workers to protect themselves.
The plan helps farm employers educate employees about risks on the farm, what to do if an accident occurs and, most importantly, how they can be prevented, says Mark Wales, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, based in Guelph, Ont.
The plan was developed by the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA), which demonstrates the plan could perhaps be applied in other jurisdictions, he says.
“That’s about encouraging all farmers to have a safety plan on the farm,” says Wales. “It’s much like a fire safety plan for the home.”
In Ontario, the plan has been adopted by Workplace Safety and Prevention Services.
