‘CONFIDENTIAL’
The Ontario coroner’s office is probing the deaths of migrant farm workers from COVID-19 in a secretive process that advocates say fails to ensure workers’ voices are heard
Behind closed doors, the Office of the Chief Coroner is examining the deaths of migrant workers who contracted COVID-19 on Ontario farms last spring in a confidential review that is proceeding without key representatives of temporary foreign workers.
It is not the public inquest many advocates and experts say is urgently needed to give answers to grieving families, shine a light on migrant work and provide lessons to authorities aimed at preventing future deaths. Three migrant farm workers died of COVID-19 last year, and roughly 1,700 others fell sick.
“This is not a process that ensures that migrant worker voices or concerns are adequately heard,” said Syed Hussan, executive director of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC).
The secrecy of the review raises questions
about how rigorous it will be at a time when the man who heads the coroner’s office — Dr. Dirk Huyer — is also in a lead COVID response role for the provincial government, which has been criticized for its inadequate response to the farm outbreaks.
Huyer is in charge of the province’s outbreak response, which includes preventing and minimizing outbreaks on farms, and previously led Ontario’s coronavirus testing approach.
The Office of the Chief Coroner did not respond to questions about the review or acknowledge its existence. Two former coroners told the Star this level of secrecy is not in keeping with the duty the coroner’s office has to ensure public confidence.
“You are here to serve the people of Ontario, and to not be transparent about the (death review) process — I just shake my head,” said former regional supervising coroner Dr. Jack Stanborough, adding that in general he supports reviews for their prospect of delivering quick answers.
Stephanie Rea, a spokesperson for the coroner’s office, said Huyer “has recused himself from any work the Office of the Chief Coroner is doing in regard to COVID-19 to maintain the impartiality of the death investigation system.”
“COVID-19 related work with the Office of the Chief Coroner is overseen by two deputy chief coroners,” she said. “Dr. Huyer, and the deputy chief coroners when acting on his behalf, report to the deputy solicitor general.”
Some 20,000 migrant workers are slated to return to Ontario farms this year. Stubbornly high levels of community transmission and fears about more contagious variants of the virus heighten the risk these lowwage, racialized workers will face. Advocates say governments have yet to implement the changes needed to protect them.
The Star has obtained a copy of the terms of reference for the “Local Death Review Table” examining migrant worker deaths. Participants are required to sign a confidentiality agreement before partaking in round-table discussions, and must make “every effort” to ensure that documents and materials “are not lost or exposed to public scrutiny.”
A final report “will be publicly available,” the terms of reference say.
Rea said the coroner’s office “does not comment on leaked or draft documents.”
Coroners have broad powers to probe deaths in Ontario, but inquests can be particularly powerful drivers of systemic change because they involve public hearings and a jury. Unlike with mining and construction, a death on a farm does not automatically trigger an inquest in Ontario. Despite repeated calls from advocates over the past 20 years, there has never been an inquest into the death of a migrant farm worker in Ontario.
“No decision has been made on whether to hold an inquest into any death of a temporary foreign worker that may have been caused by COVID-19,” Rea said, adding that “an inquest can be convened at any time following a death.”
Inquests are currently on hold due to the provincewide lockdown, she said, adding that the coroner’s office is following the example of the Superior Court, which has suspended jury trials.
From the pandemic’s outset, advocates and health experts warned migrant workers were at particular risk. Employerprovided bunkhouses, long the subject of complaints about overcrowding, saw infectious disease outbreaks even before COVID-19. Migrant workers’ precarious immigration status means raising workplace safety issues can result in job loss and being sent home. Access to health care is also a challenge for migrant workers who often don’t speak English and live in rural areas with few independent means of transportation.
These challenges became apparent early on. By May, Migrant Workers Alliance for Change had documented COVID-19 complaints on behalf of more than 1,000 workers, as massive outbreaks swept across Ontario farms. In late May and early June, two migrant workers from Mexico died after contracting COVID on farms in the Windsor area: Bonifacio Eugenio Romero, 31, and Rogelio Munoz Santos, 24. A few weeks later, Juan Lopez Chaparro, also from Mexico, died after catching the virus at Scotlynn Growers in Norfolk County. The 55-year-old father of four was among 200 Scotlynn workers who tested positive.
The coroner’s office can probe deaths through a variety of processes, ranging from an internal death investigation to a public inquest, with a similar goal: to serve “the living through highquality death investigations and inquests to ensure that no death will be overlooked, concealed or ignored,” the website states. The coroner’s office does not assign blame, but the recommendations from its probes, which are aimed at improving public safety and preventing future deaths, can point to government failings.
Justice for Migrant Workers has a long history of representing the victims of farm accidents in their unmet calls for inquests. This lack of attention reduces an essential but vulnerable workforce to a “commodity,” said Consuelo Rubio, an organizer with the group.
“They come here, they grow our food, they go back,” she said. “When they die, we replace them. That’s it.”
Last summer the two advocacy groups said the coroner’s office told them in separate conversations that an inquest into the workers’ COVID deaths would be held, potentially as early as November 2020.
“The signal we received was this was a done deal,” said Hussan of MWAC, which represents a network of cross-country migrant workers.
By the fall, with the window closing to speak to migrant workers as they left Canada and returned home, both groups said the coroner’s office shifted direction.
Hussan said the proposal was now a confidential, consensusbased process, focused on conversations with stakeholders.
The terms of reference, dated Jan. 21, describe the “local death review table” as a “confidential” process that will examine “multiple” migrant farm worker deaths caused by COVID-19 that have been “previously investigated.” The document does not say who conducted those investigations, and the coroner’s office did not share with the Star any of the details or findings they produced.
This model was deeply concerning to both Hussan and Rubio. It meant families of the deceased would not have access to legal support as they would in an inquest. The confidentiality clauses and the lack of clarity over how recommendations would be made were also antithetical to “throwing light (onto) the lives of farm workers,” said Rubio.
“The process they’re proposing doesn’t do that and therefore we can’t participate,” she said.
Both MWAC and Justice for Migrant Workers refused to participate in a review they say reflects the “lack of care and attention that is given to migrants’ lives,” said Hussan.
Rea of the coroner’s office did not directly address questions from the Star about discussions with these groups but said that inquests “typically only take place when all other investigations” and prosecutions are completed, and “appeal periods have expired.”
The review is meant to investigate systemic gaps in the pandemic response.
It will draw on “key informants representing governmental and non-governmental organizations, as well as independent experts,” according to the terms of reference.
Academic experts, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the provincial Labour Ministry confirmed they are participating.
Susana Caxaj with the Migrant Worker Health Expert Working Group said individual members of the organization are participating because “we feel it is our duty to provide best evidence that can ensure that this review proceeds in good faith.”
“But we are participating with the understanding that this process does not detract from the possibility of an inquest,” Caxaj, an assistant professor at Western University, said in an email. “We very much support and expect to see a full inquest following this review.”
Scotlynn Growers president Scott Biddle said he was not personally contacted by the coroner’s office to participate. Asked if anyone else at his organization had been approached, Biddle said “anything is possible.” Steve Laurie of Woodside Greenhouses, where Romero died, said he was unable to comment. Greenhill Produce, the farm where Santos worked at the time of his death, did not respond to the Star’s queries.
Former Scotlynn Growers worker Gabriel Flores Flores said the coroner’s office has not contacted him to participate in the review. Flores was a bunkmate of Juan Lopez Chaparro last spring and raised concerns with his employer about the outbreak that killed Chaparro. Flores, who also caught the virus, was then fired in what the provincial labour board later ruled was reprisal for voicing health and safety issues.
The coroner’s office did not respond to questions about whether migrant workers, including families of the deceased, are participating in the review.
Stanborough, the former regional supervising coroner, said while an inquest can take years, a review of multiple deaths can efficiently produce timely recommendations aimed at preventing future deaths.
“What good is a COVID-related inquest for farm workers going to do if it takes a year or 18 months to get off the ground? Nobody wants to wait 18 months for recommendations in a viral outbreak,” he said.
However, Stanborough stressed the importance of ensuring that such a review includes the voices of migrant farm workers.
“If you’re going to expedite the system, and you’re going to come up with recommendations through a closed-door system, that closed door has to have behind it all the people who are materially impacted by the recommendations,” he said.
It is unclear why there appears to be such a high level of secrecy surrounding the review into migrant worker deaths — which the coroner’s office would not even confirm is taking place. By contrast, the coroner’s office has previously said it is reinvestigating the deaths of nine Indigenous victims in Thunder Bay.
Rea said the coroner’s office is participating in the review in Thunder Bay as part of a “multidisciplinary investigation team” that came together after Ontario’s police watchdog identified systemic racism in Thunder Bay’s police force.
She said “all Local Death Review Tables are confidential to protect the privacy of the deceased and participants” and to “allow participants to speak freely.”
Huyer’s appointment last August to preside over the province’s pandemic outbreak response has raised questions about the impact this role could have on the independence of COVID death investigations.
Dr. Nav Persaud, a former research scientist at the Ontario coroner’s office and a former investigating coroner in Toronto, is among the critics who have expressed concern.
Persaud was not aware of the review. He said that the chief coroner “works in the public interest” and that “public scrutiny should be viewed as a good thing.”
“Even well-educated, well-intentioned people with a lot of information in front of them can make mistakes. And without public scrutiny, there’s a higher risk that mistakes can be made,” said Persaud, who is a family doctor in Toronto and Canada Research Chair in health justice at the University of Toronto.
Transparency is particularly important in this case, he said, because of the “power imbalance” that exists between migrant workers, employers and the government, and concerns about “whether or not authorities are going to be held to account.”
Rubio, with Justice for Migrant Workers, said “structural” failings contributed to the workers’ deaths. She raised questions about the independence of the review, noting the power of the farm lobby and Huyer’s pandemic leadership role.
“I don’t think there is an interest in having the public know,” she said.
The province’s efforts to protect migrant workers came under fire after a two-week pause in testing on farms in the Windsor-Essex area last summer and guidance from Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams, to allow asymptomatic farm workers who tested positive to continue working.
Huyer, who was appointed in May to lead the province’s testing approach, helped co-ordinate a response to the outbreaks on hard-hit farms in the Windsor-Essex region.
Dr. Shail Rawal, an internal medicine physician in Toronto, was among a group of 1,000 health-care professionals who wrote an open letter to Williams in June, urging him to “immediately reverse” the guidance allowing asymptomatic migrants to continue working on farms. Ontario’s guidance now says asymptomatic farm workers should isolate “as soon as possible.”
In an interview, Rawal said she reached out to the coroner’s office last year to advocate for an inquest into the COVID deaths of migrant farm workers. She said COVID outbreaks are caused by “a complex web of factors,” and that a review of migrant worker deaths “should be analogous” to the independent commission Ontario has launched to investigate the spread of the virus in longterm-care homes.
The Star requested a response from Williams to these criticisms but was directed to Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture. Spokesperson Christa Roettele said previous delays in testing on farms in Windsor-Essex were due to a “change in the testing providers for the region,” adding that the switch was an “important move in the long term.”
Following consultations with government and industry, the ministry created a 35-point plan to contain COVID, including enforcement and oversight by the Ministry of Labour and local health units, according to a release on the strategy.
To date, Hussan said provincial and federal authorities have not addressed the key issues putting migrant workers at risk, including their precarious immigration status and their exclusion from many basic labour protections.
No matter the outcome of the coroner’s review of migrant worker deaths, Hussan said the probe has already missed the point.
“It fails the basic standard of ensuring that those who are most affected lead the process.”
“They come here, they grow our food, they go back. When they die, we replace them. That’s it.”
CONSUELO RUBIO
JUSTICE FOR MIGRANT WORKERS