The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is the third novel in the best-selling Millennium series and the last by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson.
It might also be the title for the relationship of Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and Albertan farmers.
Notley caused waves of opposition and a series of protests where farmers showed their anger as she introduced Bill 6.
The Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act passed third reading recently, and is still being opposed by farm groups, and of course Opposition MLAs.
Once the bill is in force farmers with paid farm workers must provide Workers Compensation Board (WCB) coverage by Jan. 1 and follow occupational health and safety standards.
In a world where farming is still stuck somewhere in between the idyllic notion it is a ‘way-of-life’ and that is merely another business the same as a welding shop, or potash mine, the idea of WCB regulations is still seen as a frontal attack on the sector.
Farmers, who are in Alberta are generally not on the same political page as the New Democrats who are the helm now, immediately saw the legislation as an attack on the ‘family farm’ because they feared having to follow the basic rules of employees in other sectors if the children were headed to the barn to clean pens, or collect eggs.
Those are just things farms kids do, and to suddenly create a ruleset that would impact the ability of family members to contribute to the operation of a farm without a roll of red tape was a bit over-the-top to be sure.
Although to be fair current farms are far more high tech than they have ever been, so training to do most jobs is increasingly needed.
Let’s face it, most farms, unless specialized, do not have a coop full of laying hens for the farms kids to collect eggs from for the kitchen table, or a cow to milk, or a pen of two or three hogs to feed.
That is a farm now all but lost to the pages of a children’s book.
So the line between what is reasonable for farm youth to do on the farm without regulation, and what should require worker protections available in other sectors is blurring.
In the case of Bill 6, and the Notley-led NDP, the real problem in the end was how they handled the Bill’s introduction.
Nothing conjures unrest and causes fear like a bill that is vague in what it is designed to do.
Farmers saw their family members working beside them as being jeopardized, and that did not sit well.
From the get-go the bill wasn’t clear in its intent, and thousands of farmers turned up at government sponsored information sessions and also rallied on the steps of the Alberta legislature protesting the bill.
In this case the ground swell of protest appears to have worked.
The government amended the bill to exempt family members, both paid and unpaid, volunteers and neighbours from WCB coverage and occupational health and safety rules.
That should have quelled the concerns of farmers, but then again it is Alberta where again farmers are generally not NDP’ers so the furor continues.
In some respects that is even understandable. With Bill 6 in place, it is an amendment away from impacting farm family workers.
But if a 17-year-old works in his father’s hog farrowing barn should he reasonably have the same protections as he would get if he was pumping gas in the town down the road?
And therein lies the great debate, and Notley’s mishandling of Bill 6 from introduction to passage only managed to muddy the water, and did not ultimately answer that very fundamental question.
Calvin Daniels is Assistant Editor with Yorkton This Week.
