Migrant worker group rallies for inquests
Human rights complaint lodged in 2002 fatality
As a hearing into the death of Jamaican migrant worker Ned Peart concluded Friday, a handful of protesters gathered outside the Ontario Human rights Tribunal on Bay Street to demand changes to the provincial Coroners Act.
Mr. Peart, brought to Ontario through the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program, died in 2002 after a tobacco bin fell and crushed him at a farm near Brantford. When the Office of the Chief Coroner refused to hold an inquest, Mr. Peart’s family lodged a human-rights complaint in the hopes of catalyzing broader legislative reforms.
“There’s never been an inquest, ever in the history of Ontario, into the death of a migrant worker,” said protest organizer Chris ramsaroop, who works with Justice for Migrant Workers, based in Toronto. “This is an important process; this is a historical process. It’s about breaking the invisibility that happens with migrant workers across Ontario.”
In their 2005 complaint to the Ontario Human rights Commission, Mr. Pear t ’s family argued that a specific section of the Coroners Act — which provides for mandatory inquests for certain types of workers, but excludes others — violates the Ontario Human rights Code and has an “adverse impact” on migrant workers.
The victim’s brother, Wilbert Peart, who is now living in Florida, came to Toronto for the hearing.
“even if the tribunal rules against the coroner’s inquest, at least it should be an eye opener to the rest of Canada,” Wilbert Peart said, noting he was stunned when the family’s request for an inquest was initially denied. “It’s like, hey, are we children of a lesser God, or what?... If we don’t have an inquest, there will never be a solution and there will never be laws to prevent it from happening to other farm workers.”
The Crown declined to comment on the Peart case, referring inquiries to a spokesman for the Ministry of the Attorney-General, who did not respond.
Mr. ramsaroop said there is nothing in the law to prevent inquests into the deaths of migrant workers, but the discretionary powers to have such an inquest have never been exercised. He believes the province must correspondingly “expand the scope” of mandatory inquests, despite arguments from the Crown that migrant workers fall under federal jurisdiction. Inquests into cases like Mr. Peart’s could lead to recommendations that would improve working conditions for all migrant workers, Mr. ramsaroop said.
Among those who showed up Friday to support the Peart
Migrant workers, we are the ones that put food on
your table
family were several widows of the 10 South and Central American migrant workers who died in a van crash last year in Hampstead, west of Kitchener, after leaving their job for the day, vaccinating chickens on a nearby farm. Through a rally organizer, the widows declined interviews.
Winston Morrison, a migrant worker who had his leg amputated after a farm accident in Leamington, also joined Friday’s protest.
“The migrant workers, we are the ones that put food on your table,” he said in a brief speech to the assembled crowd, “[yet] we are still treated like we are nobody.”
A decision in the Peart case is expected later this year, 11 years after his death.