ALF V1

Re: "Voluntary safety rules for farms ineffective, experts say," Sept. 18.

It is hard to describe how disheartening, how damaging, how dreadful it must be for farm workers and their families to read the harsh words spoken recently by Wildrose MLA Jeff Wilson.

Imagine you are a child who has lost a parent in a farm accident, or a parent who has lost a child. Then imagine being told that applying the same health and safety laws to farm work sites that apply to all other work sites in the province is a "burden" or too "complicated" for farm operations.

From the biggest cities to the smallest hamlets, Albertans know that we must do all we can to make our workplaces safe. It is especially important on farms, where heavy industrial equipment mixes with vulnerable workers, often migrants and sometimes children.

Simple attempts to save lives cannot be callously dismissed as complicated or brushed off as burden-some.

The evidence from experts is perfectly clear.

Education alone will not save lives on our farms.

Occupational health and safety regulations must be applied.

These regulations aren't too complicated or too much of a burden for any other employers.

Are those who refuse to implement these rules really saying that Alberta farm operations are so backward that they can't do what other employers do, or what farms in other provinces do?

Alberta can and must do better. It's time to move past this dangerous 19th-century approach to farming.

Gil McGowan
Gil McGowan is president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

The Calgary Herald, Thursday Sept 20 2012

Issue:

RALLY for CEP 52A Edmonton Catholic Support staff

Friday, September 21, 2012 at 10:30 AM

Edmonton Catholic Support Staff are well into their second week of their strike. Friday's rally will draw on supporters from Edmonton unions. David Coles, National President of CEP will be joining the picket line and will address both strikers and the media.

Action(s):

Affiliates are urged to join the picket line at 10:30 AM on Friday in a strong show of solidarity. Please arrange to meet with your banners and flags at the Catholic School Board District's head office at 9807 – 106 Street, Edmonton.

The local is also asking affiliates to alert CEP52A President Wilma Ellenberg at 780.945-1394 if they have any casual work for members who are on strike. This would be temporary work in addition to the work they do on the picket lines.

When: Friday, September 21st at 10:30 AM

Where: The Edmonton Catholic day and until Edmonton Catholic Schools support staff goes back to work.

This the first strike for the local, and issues on the table include: wages, cuts to work hours and what the local is calling "job erosion" (more work, fewer staff with fewer hours to do said work).

Literally everybody – and that includes Alberta Premier Alison Redford – knows that permitting an industry to "voluntarily" self-regulate the health and safety of its own workers amounts to a load of a very common agricultural product frequently spread on the ground as fertilizer.

This includes, by the way, every one of those well-greased lobbyists and earnest spokespeople for Alberta's agricultural industry who presumably subjected Ms. Redford to the full court press to forget about her impetuous promise to cover farm workers under Alberta's health and safety legislation during last fall's Conservative leadership campaign.

As was no doubt quickly brought to Ms. Redford's attention upon taking the oath of office, Conservative premiers just don't do that sort of thing in Alberta – even when the countryside is seriously contemplating voting for the loony-right Wildrose Party. Maybe especially when the countryside is seriously contemplating voting for the loony-right Wildrose Party!

So, am I calling these people liars? You bet I am!

They know as you know and I know and Ms. Redford knows that not including agricultural workers under the province's health and safety laws costs lives now and will cost more lives in the future. They also know the principal reason they don't want to have to comply with this reasonable kind of regulation is because now and then it might shave a few dollars off their bottom line.

Don't ever let someone talk snottily about how life's cheap in some other part of the world. It can be pretty cheap in Alberta too. (And it's cheaper, take note, here than in any other part of Canada, because everywhere else in Canada, farm workers do come under health and safety legislation.)

Notwithstanding her broken promise, by the way, I'm not accusing Ms. Redford of lying. She's merely scrambling to avoid having to lie about the topic. Earlier this week, according to the Calgary Herald, the premier's media spokesthingies were referring reporters' questions to members of her cabinet. Her agriculture minister and her minister responsible for health and safety law, meanwhile, refused to be interviewed about it.

This topic is in the news because a report of something called the Farm Safety Advisory Council, which was set up by Ms. Redford's predecessor, Farmer Ed Stelmach, recommends that unlike every other civilized jurisdiction, Alberta farm workers continue to be excluded from the protection of health and safety law.

This being Alberta, they're also excluded from laws governing hours of work, overtime pay, statutory holidays, vacation pay, the right to refuse unsafe work, compensation if they're injured on the job or even the right to be told if they work they're being instructed to do is dangerous!

Ms. Redford's ministers have been studying this and studying it and studying it – presumably while they try to come up with a way to pass off what they plan to do as concern for farm worker safety. Then some anonymous and inconsiderate person leaked the scheme to the media, whereupon reporters lobbed a few questions for the premier and her ministers to evade answering.

Now, the recommendation of the Farm Safety Advisory Council comes as no surprise, as Alberta Federation of Labour President Gil McGowan pointed out in a letter to the premier, because the advisory council is packed with representatives of agricultural corporations.

The advisory council, by the way, thinks the workers should be "educated" about safety. That's a good one, considering the advantage bosses have anywhere – even if you happen to speak English and know a good lawyer or two. Temporary foreign workers, frightened, far from home and unable to speak the local lingo? Good luck to them!

One advantage of this approach from the employer's perspective, of course, is that if something does go terribly wrong, God forbid, they can blame the dead or injured worker.

It's also important to remember, while we're talking about "farm workers," that Alberta doesn't just use that term to describe the hired hand on a run-down family farm – which I'm sure is the image they'd like you to think of when you hear the expression – but also for employees of giant industrial operations run by multinational corporations, including hog farms, massive feedlots and hay processing factories that ship stuff overseas.

In other words, in many cases here in Alberta, it's a significant class of industrial workers that has been excluded from the right to a safe and healthy workplace by this lamentable situation.

Meanwhile, according to the director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research, a government funded operation at the University of Alberta, the Advisory Council had no interest in his group's advice, which was to include the farm workers under the health and safety umbrella.

"Our input was based on the science but it wasn't listened to," epidemiologist Don Voaklander, the U of A Centre's director, told the Herald. He added: "These corporate farms, large feedlots and custom haying operations are no different than businesses that are drilling for oil or fixing your car. The agrarian myth of the rugged family farm just doesn't apply."

Think about this sort of thing when you hear those kindly souls from the anti-union Merit Contractors, the extreme-right Tax Exempt Fraser Institute for Market Fundamentalist Propaganda (TEFIMFP) and the further reaches of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's backbenches explaining that we don't need unions any more because we have all this great health and safety legislation, labour laws and the like.

Well, you may wonder, why don't Alberta's farm workers just join a union and start the long march to better labour conditions?

That would be the ticket, eh? Just one thing about that plan, though: it's also illegal in Alberta for "farm workers" to be represented by a union!

Sure, the law's unconstitutional, but someone who had suffered because of it would have to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.

So think about this the next time you're serenaded about the need for "worker choice" and the "right to work" – meaning laws to make unions ineffective or outright illegal – by one of these "friends of the working person."

If not having unions is so great because we already have such wonderful safety laws, labor laws and rules against children working in industrial plants, how come the only sector without this protection just happens to be the only sector where you're not allowed to join a union? Just wondering.

In the meantime, let's call a spade an agricultural implement. The fact Alberta farm workers are still not covered by basic health and safety law, and the fact Premier Redford has broken her promise to make sure they are protected, is a disgrace.

Rabble.ca Wednesday Sept 19 2012
Byline: David Climenhaga

The benefits to the oil industry of Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline may be exaggerated and its costs to the economy and environment underestimated, hearings into the project have been told.

The $6-billion pipeline project has been touted as a way to link burgeoning production from Alberta's oil sands to growing markets in Asia, which would allow Canadian producers to improve profits by reaping higher prices for crude overseas.

But a lawyer for the Haisla First Nation, which claims much of the land through which the pipeline would travel, said on Tuesday that projections of nearly $1.5-billion a year in increased revenue by 2018 are inflated.

Hana Boye said the estimate Enbridge is presenting at the National Energy Board hearings was developed with figures from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that suggest oil supply in Western Canada will grow by 6.5 per cent per year between 2011 and 2020.

That's different than what Enbridge is telling its investors, Ms. Boye said. The company's own estimate is 4.4 per cent growth – a difference of 500,000 barrels a day by 2020 that would lead to a corresponding drop in revenues earned by producers.

"Have you given a different supply forecast to your shareholders than that provided to the panel?" Ms. Boye asked Enbridge's Gateway manager, John Carruthers, on Tuesday.

Mr. Carruthers acknowledged that different figures have been used at different times. Estimates can vary depending on assumptions of what the mix of varying crudes would be, he said.

"There would be times when we would see differences."

But the variances aren't big enough to change the project's economics, Mr. Carruthers said.

"The minor changes over time don't change the project need."

Ms. Boye added that the project could discourage the upgrading of oil sands bitumen in Alberta and that its cost to the environment hasn't been fully evaluated.

She pressed Enbridge over the use of diluent – lightweight solvents mixed with bitumen or other heavy crudes to make them flow through a pipe. Although the mix varies, about one-third of what would flow through the Gateway line would be diluent. The Gateway project includes a second pipeline that would bring diluent from the B.C. coast to Alberta. Ms. Boye suggested the cost of that diluent has not been factored into calculations of producer benefit.

Ignoring the cost of diluent exaggerates the case for shipping raw bitumen outside Alberta for upgrading or refining, said Robyn Allan, an analyst for the Alberta Federation of Labour who is advising the Haisla.

"There is no economic analysis ... that's been supplied to the hearings [of the impact] to the Canadian economy when we import condensate instead of upgrading in Alberta," she said outside the hearing.

Ms. Boye also questioned environmental economist Mark Anielski about his dollar-value calculation of the project's environmental impact. She pointed out that his analysis included only the 50-metre pipeline right of way and ignored possible effects outside that corridor.

Mr. Anielski responded that those effects could exist, but there's no credible method of putting a monetary value on them. He also acknowledged his report didn't put a value on a wide array of ecological effects from forests that would be disturbed by the pipeline – everything from erosion control to genetic diversity to pollination.

The Canadian Press, Tuesday Sept 18 2012
Byline: Bob Weber

The benefits to the oil industry of Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline may be exaggerated and its costs to the economy and environment underestimated, hearings into the project heard Tuesday.

The $6-billion pipeline has been touted as a way to link burgeoning production from Alberta's oilsands to growing markets in Asia, which would allow Canadian producers to improve profits by reaping higher prices for crude overseas.

But a lawyer for the Haisla First Nation, which claims much of the land the pipeline would travel though, said projections of nearly $1.5 billion a year in increased revenue by 2018 are inflated.

Hana Boye said the estimate Enbridge (TSX:ENB) is presenting at the National Energy Board hearings was developed with figures from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers which suggest oil supply in Western Canada will grow by 6.5 per cent a year between 2011 and 2020.

The proposed route for Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline is from just north of Edmonton Alberta to Kitimat on the West Coast of B.C. EnbridgeThe proposed route for Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline is from just north of Edmonton Alberta to Kitimat on the West Coast of B.C. Enbridge

That's different than what Enbridge is telling its own investors and shareholders, said Boye. The company's own estimate is 4.4 per cent growth — a difference of 500,000 barrels a day by 2020 that leads to a corresponding drop in revenues earned by producers.

"Have you given a different supply forecast to your shareholders than that provided to the panel?" Boye asked Enbridge's Gateway manager John Carruthers on Tuesday.

Carruthers acknowledged that different figures have been used at different times. Estimates can vary depending on assumptions of what the mix of varying crudes would be, he said.

"There would be times when we would see differences."

But the variances aren't big enough to change the project's economics, Carruthers said.

"The minor changes over time don't change the project need."

Boye added that the project could discourage the upgrading of oilsands bitumen in Alberta and that its cost to the environment hasn't been fully evaluated.

She pressed Enbridge over the use of diluent — lightweight solvents mixed with bitumen or other heavy crudes to make them flow through a pipe. Although the mix varies, roughly one-third of what would flow through the Gateway line would be diluent. The Gateway project includes a second pipeline that would import diluent from the B.C. coast back to Alberta.

Boye suggested the cost of that diluent has not been factored into calculations of producer benefit.

Ignoring the cost of diluent exaggerates the case for shipping raw bitumen outside Alberta for upgrading or refining, said Robyn Allan, an analyst for the Alberta Federation of Labour, who is advising the Haisla.

"There is no economic analysis ... that's been supplied to the hearings (of the impact) to the Canadian economy when we import condensate instead of upgrading in Alberta," she said outside the hearing.

"Importing condensate instead of upgrading (bitumen) is hollowing out the sector."

Claims analysis ignored side effects

Boye also questioned environmental economist Mark Anielski about his dollar-value calculation of the project's environmental impact. She pointed out that his analysis only included the 50-metre pipeline right of way and ignored possible effects outside that corridor.

Anielski responded those effects could exist, but there's no credible method of putting a monetary value on them.

"This kind of information is not available," he said. "To speculate would be unprofessional of me."

Anielski also acknowledged his report didn't put a value on a wide array of ecological effects from forests that would be disturbed by the pipeline — everything from erosion control to genetic diversity to pollination.

Enbridge has promised to plant a tree for every one cut down for the pipeline right-of-way, he said. The company is also working with the Nature Conservancy to protect land that would offset areas disturbed by the project.

The hearings are expected to continue in Edmonton throughout the week.

The Canadian Press, Tues Sept 18 2012

The benefits to the oil industry of Enbridge Inc.'s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline may be exaggerated and its costs to the economy and environment underestimated, hearings into the project heard Tuesday.

The $6-billion pipeline has been touted as a way to link burgeoning production from Alberta's oilsands to growing markets in Asia, which would allow Canadian producers to improve profits by reaping higher prices for crude overseas.

But a lawyer for the Haisla First Nation, which claims much of the land the pipeline would travel though, said projections of nearly $1.5 billion a year in increased revenue by 2018 are inflated.

Hana Boye said the estimate Enbridge (TSX:ENB) is presenting at the National Energy Board hearings was developed with figures from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers which suggest oil supply in Western Canada will grow by 6.5 per cent a year between 2011 and 2020.

The proposed route for Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline is from just north of Edmonton Alberta to Kitimat on the West Coast of B.C. EnbridgeThe proposed route for Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipeline is from just north of Edmonton Alberta to Kitimat on the West Coast of B.C. Enbridge

That's different than what Enbridge is telling its own investors and shareholders, said Boye. The company's own estimate is 4.4 per cent growth — a difference of 500,000 barrels a day by 2020 that leads to a corresponding drop in revenues earned by producers.

"Have you given a different supply forecast to your shareholders than that provided to the panel?" Boye asked Enbridge's Gateway manager John Carruthers on Tuesday.

Carruthers acknowledged that different figures have been used at different times. Estimates can vary depending on assumptions of what the mix of varying crudes would be, he said.

"There would be times when we would see differences."

But the variances aren't big enough to change the project's economics, Carruthers said.

"The minor changes over time don't change the project need."

Boye added that the project could discourage the upgrading of oilsands bitumen in Alberta and that its cost to the environment hasn't been fully evaluated.

She pressed Enbridge over the use of diluent — lightweight solvents mixed with bitumen or other heavy crudes to make them flow through a pipe. Although the mix varies, roughly one-third of what would flow through the Gateway line would be diluent. The Gateway project includes a second pipeline that would import diluent from the B.C. coast back to Alberta.

Boye suggested the cost of that diluent has not been factored into calculations of producer benefit.

Ignoring the cost of diluent exaggerates the case for shipping raw bitumen outside Alberta for upgrading or refining, said Robyn Allan, an analyst for the Alberta Federation of Labour, who is advising the Haisla.

"There is no economic analysis ... that's been supplied to the hearings (of the impact) to the Canadian economy when we import condensate instead of upgrading in Alberta," she said outside the hearing.

"Importing condensate instead of upgrading (bitumen) is hollowing out the sector."

Claims analysis ignored side effects

Boye also questioned environmental economist Mark Anielski about his dollar-value calculation of the project's environmental impact. She pointed out that his analysis only included the 50-metre pipeline right of way and ignored possible effects outside that corridor.

Anielski responded those effects could exist, but there's no credible method of putting a monetary value on them.

"This kind of information is not available," he said. "To speculate would be unprofessional of me."

Anielski also acknowledged his report didn't put a value on a wide array of ecological effects from forests that would be disturbed by the pipeline — everything from erosion control to genetic diversity to pollination.

Enbridge has promised to plant a tree for every one cut down for the pipeline right-of-way, he said. The company is also working with the Nature Conservancy to protect land that would offset areas disturbed by the project.

The hearings are expected to continue in Edmonton throughout the week.

The Canadian Press, Tuesday Sept 18 2012

AFL urges Premier to remain steadfast on commitment to protect farm workers

Status quo with respect to farm safety is simply not good enough, writes McGowan

EDMONTON – Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, today urged Premier Redford to remain steadfast in her commitment to protect farm workers under provincial health and safety legislation.

"I commend you for declaring your intention during your campaign for leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party that, as Premier, you would protect farm workers by including them in our province's health and safety legislation," writes McGowan. "I hope, as I know the families of farm workers killed on the job hope, that you remain dedicated to this objective."

McGowan's letter (view here) was prompted by a leaked draft report from the Farm Safety Advisory Council which recommended that farm workers remain excluded from the provinces health and safety legislation.

McGowan points out that unlike other Alberta workers, farm workers are completely exempt from the Labour Relations Code, mandatory Workers Compensation Board coverage, most provisions in the Employment Standards Code, and are only covered by Occupational Health and Safety Act in mushroom factories, greenhouses, nurseries and sod farms - all other farm workers are excluded, including those working in hog barns, feed lots, and other large operations.

"Maintaining the status quo with respect to farm safety is simply not good enough," writes McGowan. "As the number of farms in Alberta declines – both family farms and corporate farms – farm fatalities remain stubbornly high, meaning farming is more dangerous now than it has been in recent memory. I fear that the continued exclusion of farm workers from Alberta's health and safety laws will allow this woeful and tragic trend to continue."

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MEDIA CONTACT: Gil McGowan, AFL President, 780-218-9888

New farm safety rules 'useless'

Experts hit out at voluntary certifications

A provincially funded research body says a leaked proposal for voluntary safety certification of Alberta's agriculture industry won't curb the rising rate of farm deaths and injuries.

The director of the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research said Monday that his group's advice to a government-appointed committee - that the province impose health and safety regulations on farms like every other jurisdiction in the country - was ignored.

"Our input was based on the science but it wasn't listened to," U of A epidemiologist Don Voaklander said.

"These corporate farms, large feedlots and custom haying operations are no different than businesses that are drilling for oil or fixing your car. The agrarian myth of the rugged family farm just doesn't apply."

Recent statistics show 355 Albertans have died and 678 were seriously-injured in the past three decades. About nine per cent of the fatalities involved hired workers.

In a report obtained by The Herald and submitted to the province last February, the Farm Safety Advisory council recommended increased education and voluntary certification of farms to improve the industry's worsening safety record.

But Voaklander, whose centre depends on $1.5 million a year from Alberta Health, said a 2008 study of a similar program in neighbouring Saskatchewan found no significant difference in injury rates among participating farms.

"We're directed to be at arm's length from the government," he said.

"I mean I'm not going to go out and (criticize a minister or the government) ... but there's very little evidence that education of farmers actually works."

Premier Alison Redford promised during her Tory leadership campaign last fall that she would extend health and safety law protection to farm workers if elected, but on Monday her staff referred questions on the issue to cabinet.

With Agriculture Minister Vern Olson and Human Ser-vices Minister Dave Hancock both declining to be inter-viewed about a report they've been studying for nearly seven months, opposition critics hammered the Tory government for delaying while farm workers continued to be killed and injured on the job.

"It's immoral," Calgary Liberal MLA Dr. David Swann said.

"This government, whose voter base has been traditionally rural, is hard-pressed to put in place what they would call onerous rules but which are absolutely the norm in Western civilization."

New Democrat MLA Rachel Notley said it would be delusional for the government to accept the advisory council's philosophy that farm workers, particularly a fastincreasing number of vulnerable temporary migrants, can be educated to assert their right to refuse dangerous work.

"Premier Redford has capitulated to a strong conservative lobby within her caucus and without," Notley said.

Calgary Wildrose MLA Jeff Wilson said his party supports the council's call for farm safety education programs to curb the rising fatality and injury rate.

"We do believe the safety of those working on farms should be worldclass," said Wilson, "but we also don't want to add more burdens or complicated regulations to the farming community."

Calgary Herald, Sunday Sept 16 2012
Byline: Matt McClure

Peter Lougheed Passing Statement

On behalf of 150,000 Alberta union members,
I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Peter Lougheed

EDMONTON- "On behalf of 150,000 Alberta union members, I extend my deepest condolences to the family of Peter Lougheed. We have lost a visionary and principled leader. Using our tremendous natural resources wealth, Peter Lougheed built the modern Alberta - investing in schools, hospitals, infrastructure, building industries, and protecting the environment, such as establishing Kananaskis Country. He built the Heritage Fund and urged us to think like owners of our resources. Lougheed understood the concept of the public interest, and did not confuse what was good for private industry with what is good for the public as a whole. He was not a cheerleader for narrow business interests, and he did not engage in gimmicks or short-term thinking. He used our wealth to build a better Alberta.

Lougheed was concerned about Alberta's future right to the end of his life, and used his political stature to raise important questions about the pace of development in the oil sands and the rapidly increasing trend towards shipping bitumen raw instead of upgrading it in the province. He was unafraid of challenging his successors as they moved away from his priorities for the province. Even when he was being actively critical of governments and leaders who came after him, he was always statesmanlike, always with a view to the bigger picture of Albertans' public interest. He remained engaged and outspoken in the affairs of our province, I think, because he saw Alberta's potential as more than just the success of a few industries, or short-lived booms and busts - he saw us as a community. "

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MEDIA CONTACT:

Gil McGowan, AFL President, 780-218-9888