Farm workers should be considered the only stakeholders in Bill 6
There was a bit of a dust-up on Facebook the other day when Darlene Dunlop, co-founder of the Farmworkers Union of Alberta, questioned where Alberta Liberal leadership hopeful Kerry Cundal stands on Bill 6.
Dunlop wrote that during the April 8 debate between Cundal and her fellow leadership contender, David Khan: “Ms Cundal made a point of bashing Bill 6, the Enhanced Protection for Farm & Ranch Workers Act. Then she pointed to Richard Starke, Wayne Drysdale & Greg Clark as centrists. These three all voted against Bill 6.
“Bill 6 honours the Charter rights of the men, women & children engaged in Alberta’s agriculture industry. If you do not honour rights of Canadians how can you be a centrist?”
Cundal responded by saying that she did not bash Bill 6, but rather wanted to point out “how stakeholder outreach could have been done better.”
In an email this week, Dunlop wrote me, “Perhaps Ms. Cundal doesn’t know that it was a dozen years of work by the Alberta Liberals and monetary contributions also that allowed the ND to act quickly to stem the tide of uninsured workers and their families.
“Did she read the PC farm worker insurance study by Sigma Risk Management? Did she do any research before she spoke during the debate with David Khan?”
The 2015 Sigma report, commissioned by the former Tory government, contained statistics on farm injuries and deaths that strongly indicated insurance coverage for workers was necessary. The refrain about stakeholder outreach on “the Charter rights of the men, women and children engaged in Alberta’s agriculture industry,” has been playing over and over since before Bill 6 — which enshrined occupational health and safety regulations into law for farm workers — was passed in December 2015.
The word “stakeholder” implies someone who profits monetarily from a given situation.
It carries the unpleasant connotation that with Bill 6, the money issue is on equal footing with the human rights issue.
That is exactly where it shouldn’t be.
You don’t hear restaurant owners loudly griping that they weren’t consulted about public health laws forbidding mice in their kitchens, or requiring them to follow certain standards so customers don’t get food poisoning. Yet, they’re stakeholders and compliance costs them money.
A few days ago, it was announced that Calgary’s first responders will be getting 500 sets of ballistic body armour to better protect them on the job.
Are Calgarians — the stakeholders whose taxes are paying for the new armour — complaining that they weren’t consulted? Of course not.
Indeed, Calgary police Chief Roger Chaffin said, “We certainly have both a moral and legal obligation to make sure our officers are as well protected as possible.”
Substitute “farm workers” for “officers” and Chaffin’s statement reflects perfectly what Bill 6 is all about. Who can argue with people’s safety?
Apparently, the “stakeholders” in the farming and ranching business can.
“I think sometimes people forget that (emergency responders are) all still people who have families, homes and children,” Chaffin added.
For more than 35 years, while other provinces were putting farm-worker protections into their laws, Alberta deliberately ignored the fact that those workers also have families, homes and children. Like all workers in this province, those employed on farms have a right to expect that Alberta’s laws will protect them if they suffer an accident at work.
It’s ironic that Cundal’s comment came the day before thousands of Albertans rallied at the legislature to protest the province’s outdated labour laws.
It’s not just the laws that need modernizing; it’s attitudes, too.
Let’s stop arguing that stakeholders weren’t consulted enough over human rights legislation. Isn’t that really just a euphemism for watering down the legislation to placate the monetary interests of those opposed to basic workplace protections?
The only real stakeholders in the case of Bill 6 are the farm workers, because it’s their lives that are on the line.