Tories grapple with farm safety
Candidates won’t back Redford vow
Alberta’s Tory leadership candidates are under pressure to live up to a promise by former premier Alison Redford three years ago to protect farm workers under provincial occupational health and safety regulations, but none of the three have agreed to fulfil her commitment.
Alberta farm workers are excluded from protection provided under provincial occupational health and safety laws, the workers’ compensation act, labour relations code, or the employment standards code.
Alberta is the only province with OHS exemptions, and provincial court Judge Peter Barley recommended in 2009 the province include paid farm workers under the farm safety act while exempting family members and other nonpaid workers.
During the 2011 PC leadership race, Redford vowed to change the rules, but instead enacted a series of studies.
Farmworkers Union of Alberta president and founder Eric Musekamp said the Tory government is afraid to take on the powerful agricultural and business groups and has dragged its feet on the issue, despite Redford’s promise to address the matter.
“She told me face-to-face she was doing it, but my perception is the powers that be in the PC government ... tapped her on the shoulder and commanded her to back off. And she did.”
Musekamp said he’s now pressing the leadership candidates — Thomas Lukaszuk, Jim Prentice and Ric McIver — to take up the cause.
According to provincial data, 447 Alberta farmers died on the job between 1985 and 2010.
Last year, the number of deaths jumped to 16 from 10 in 2012.
In 2012, the Redford government’s Farm Safety Advisory Council recommended the province continue to exempt hired farm workers from OHS legislation. It called for an enhanced safety education program and voluntary certification instead.
Last month, a research report from a University of Calgary law professor and her students argued the exemption of farm workers from provincial legislation protecting employees — including OHS rules — is unconstitutional.
Excluding agri-workers from OHS protection means they are more likely to be injured or put at risk at work, the report concluded.
“They are denied the equal benefit and protection of occupational health and safety laws on the basis of their occupational status,” it said.
PC leadership candidate Ric McIver said Friday he has no intention of making the change.
“If it was a completely straightforward issue, it would probably be decided by now,” McIver said. “The fact is, it’s a complex issue and it hasn’t been decided.”
Thomas Lukaszuk, the former jobs and labour minister, said the province is “definitely moving” in the direction of protecting the workers. However, he said he wouldn’t mandate that as premier.
“We need to move in that direction, the question is how do we get there,” he said.
Lukaszuk noted provinces, such as Saskatchewan, simply don’t enforce OHS rules in the ag industry.
“I will not unilaterally rewrite a piece of legislation that I know at this point of time I can’t even en- force,” Lukaszuk said. “We don’t have safety protocols for agricultural equipment.”
He pointed out no farmer has challenged the legislation.
“We have a few people from downtown Edmonton and downtown Calgary arguing that farmers should be included under these two pieces of legislation, but farmers themselves are not asking for it.”
PC leadership candidate Jim Prentice told the Herald’s editorial board earlier this month he would look into the issue, but he said Monday legislation is not the answer.
“My view is that I don’t think the way to advance farm safety and worker safety on farms is to sweep all of the farming operations in the province, including family farms, into the Workers Compensation Board jurisdiction,” he said. “I think there are other things we need to do with the agricultural sector that can improve farm safety and worker safety.”
He said education programs to enhance worker safety and worker training would be a good start.
Alberta Labour ministry spokesman Brookes Merritt said the government has “no immediate plans” to remove the OHS exemption for farm workers, but is maintaining a focus on education, injury prevention and awareness.
Liberal MLA David Swann said the Tories are simply afraid to alienate some of their rural base, and it makes no sense to blame a lack of legislation for OHS protection because the government lacks proper safety protocols for the farm.
“That’s disingenuous,” Swann said. “Everybody is safer when you have legislation and enforce the standards.”
The rural-based Wildrose official Opposition doesn’t support removing the exemption either.
Ian Donovan, a farmer and Wildrose MLA for Little Bow, said applying OHS to farms would be cumbersome, and many of the rules would not be practical to enforce.
But he said farm workers should be covered by the WCB, noting he pays to provide WCB coverage for his own farm employee.
Lynn Jacobson, president of the Alberta Federation of Agriculture, formerly the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, said optional WCB coverage makes sense and the time is coming soon where OHS rules will apply to farm workers.
“We are recognizing that in the long run we are going to be included under OHS, whether we want to or not,” Jacobson said Friday. “We want to be part of the group that sets up rules around agriculture for OHS because what applies to other industries just does not make sense for agriculture.”
The federation has neither supported nor rejected the idea of farm workers being protected by OHS rules but its board believes it is coming because of high rates of farm deaths and larger farms.
“Agriculture is changing,” he said. “We don’t want to force anybody, but the hard reality is the rules are going to change.”
Bryan Walton, chief executive of the Alberta Cattle Feeders’ Association, said the group hasn’t seen conclusive evidence that OHS legislation actually solves the problem.
“It is often stated that because it is in all the other provinces that it should be here,” he said. “Every other province has a sales tax; do you think we should have one here because every other province does? That is the same logic. So let’s get at the root problem ... we want to make sure whatever is designed is designed with the outcome in mind.”