National Post (National Edition)
CHORES VS. CHILD LABOUR
Cool Springs Ranch & Butchery north of Yorkton, Sask.,
is a magnet for the local food enthusiast — the kind of place that hosts farm to fork dinners and describes their animals as “pasture-fed” and “free-range.” It’s family-run, to boot — with
Janeen and Sam Covlin allowing their daughters Emma, eight, and Kate, 10, help raise their animals, bring them to slaughter and prepare them for market.
That was, until the govern
ment dropped by last week with an Occupational Health and Safety order prohibiting the girls from working in the chicken processing plant, a major part of the farm’s oper
ation.
The couple posted their plight to social media and support came their way in waves, much of it critical of an overbearing government trying to
mess with tradition and grassroots family life.
Within a day or so, the government withdrew the order, but said a 14- and 15-year-old who worked at the farm and were not members of the Cov
lin family would have to quit.
Still, the case has squared focus on the line between chores and child labour and just how massively the relationship between children and
work has changed over time.
The Post’s Sarah Boesveld explores Canada’s child labour laws.
Q How old does a child have to be in order to work in Canada?
cial, A Labour but generally laws are speaking, provin-young people can start work in Canada around age 14 — that’s the case in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and
Newfoundland and Labrador, according to the Commission for Labor Cooperation. Fifteen is the minimum age in Alberta (though Alberta excludes farms and ranches from
child labour law) and British Columbia, while youth can start work at 16 in Manitoba. Children younger than 14 can work in Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island but with some limitations. Minors are also only allowed to work limited hours (mostly outside the school day and no more than two to three hours) and are not supposed to work in dangerous
places. Farms are not typically considered dangerous workplaces according to labour law. “Child labour in general, particularly for children under 12 is deemed to be a bad
thing because children are not physically or cognitively or emotionally mature enough, generally, to undertake work in a safe manner — there are threats to their physical health, their mental and
emotional development,” said Bob Barnetson, a professor at Athabasca University’s Centre for Work and Community Studies. “So we really limit what people who are under
12 can do. The big exception tends to be farming. In Alberta, for example, there are no rules. And in other provinces, governments tend to be reluctant to enforce rules, particularly on small farms.”
Q What constitutes regular
farm chores vs. child labour?
A “Typically if a farm employs less than three people, it won’t fall under health and safety regulations,” Prof. Barnetson
said. But when farms incorporate processing, as Cool Springs does, he believes a line is crossed. “Meat packing is one of Canada’s three or four most dangerous occupa
tions,” said Prof. Barnetson,
whose 2009 paper Narratives Justifying Unregulated Child Labour in Agriculture is critical of Alberta’s low levels of regulation when it comes
to farm child labour. “We’re taking a common-sense approach,” Don Morgan, the provincial labour minister told the Saskatoon Star-Phoe
nix. “We’re treating this as an extension of the family farm operation.” Prof. Barnetson believes there is plenty of routine unsafe labour on family farms that children regularly perform — feeding lots of large livestock poses a hazard,
he said, as does driving large
machinery such as tractors.
Q But children have been working on farms forever, right? Why mess with tradition?
A War, Since children the Second living World on farms performed all kinds of heavy labour, said Anne-Marie Ambert, a retired professor of sociology at York University
who has written on changing family roles and expectations. “A farm can be very dangerous, but crossing the street can be very dangerous too,” she said. As social values shifted to make children, as
one U.S. sociologist put it “economically worthless, but emotionally priceless,” labour laws also evolved in each province, though farming has remained somewhat of an outlier. Farms
are what settled this country and they instil a work ethic that seems to be on the wane, Prof. Ambert said. “It makes life meaningful to children to contribute [in this way] and maybe this is why we have so many kids in high school who feel very depressed,” absorbed by Facebook and on smartphone games. The case was also framed as an unjustified attack on a family farm.
Though surprised the government withdrew the order, Prof. Barnetson said standing
In Alberta we have no regulations. That’s too far
by it would have been a bad move politically. “They can’t afford to lose rural seats,” he said, of Western provincial governments.
Q So is farm child labour not
really a problem?
A There is a small but active lobby in Canada that says yes. A decade ago this September, Darlene Dunlop and husband Eric founded the Farmworkers Union of Alberta partly due to what they perceived to be child exploitation. “I found myself working with eight, nine and 10-year-old paid labourers, not farmers chil
dren.” Many of them were not middle-class white children like Emma and Kate Covlin, she said, but Mennonite Mexican children who work alongside or even apart from their
parents. “One could argue ‘yes, government goes too far,’” she said in response to public outcry over the Cool Springs Ranch order. “But in Alberta we have no regulations. That’s too far.”