CHAPTER 6: Preventable Homicide

The pressure of a public campaign mounted by the CFU to include farmworkers in health and safety regulations pushed the province to announce in April 1982 that B.C.'s 13,000 farmworkers would start to be covered by the Workers' Compensation Board within a year. The union helped draft new regulations for pesticide use, but the growers were busy pressuring the government to scrap the plan.

B.C. Federation of Agriculture president George Aylard said the new coverage would prompt further mechanization of farms and boost farmers' costs. Aylard tellingly told the Vancouver Sun in March 1982 that it would be more difficult to stay in business, "because we're competing with products from out of the province and out of the country, where labor is cheaper to start with and coverage isn't mandatory." Aylard admitted, however, that the changes were inevitable, saying,"We realize it's the 20th Century and this kind of coverage has to be extended."

A federally-funded study on pesticide use conducted in the summer of 1982 laid out the seriousness of the need for change. The study found that "almost 90 per cent of the farmworkers interviewed had no idea about the identity of pesticides, their nature, or the possible hazards associated with their use because of a lack of training and information."

Project researcher David Lane found that 89 per cent of the farmers he surveyed had no guidelines for entry into fields that had been sprayed with pesticides. The statistics Lane collected were shocking to most: about 20 per cent of farmworkers breathe pesticide fumes while working, 80 per cent suffer direct eye contact and 55 per cent have been directly sprayed. Seven of out ten became physically ill after a direct spraying, but only slightly more than three per cent of the growers sought medical help for their workers. As for symptoms, more than 44 per cent have suffered skin rashes, 47 per cent experienced itching, while 50 per cent reported headaches and 35 per cent experienced dizziness - and much of this was experienced by children working in the fields, according to the report.

"To anyone but farmworkers, the results of this survey are shocking," CFU president Raj Chouhan told reporters at a joint press conference called by the survey team and the union. "The complete disregard of safety procedures, the relationship between sickness and the amount of exposure and the total lack of protection for farmworkers are all an illustration of the dismal conditions of pesticide use in British Columbia."

The B.C. Medical Association backed the report, calling for "far-reaching and badly-needed safeguards" for farmworkers exposed to pesticides. In a brief to the WCB, the B.C. Medical Association listed 12 recommendations they wanted covered by WCB regulations, including: the monitoring of environment and workforce, setting maximum exposure levels and looking at California laws for emergency medical care and medical supervision of farmworkers."

The medical association also cited a higher-than-usual incidence deaths among farmworkers from stomach, liver, prostate and lymph gland cancers that were "reasonably assumed" to be caused by pesticides.

While the Consumers' Association of Canada and the B.C. Medical Association joined the call for strict regulation of pesticide use, the growers' advocacy group, the B.C. Federation of Agriculture, disputed many of report's findings calling them "overstated and unjustified." The federation told the Kelowna Capital News in November, 1982, that the answer to the problem was "greater education and the promotion of pesticide safety among the growers."

On March 10, 1983, less than one month before the new health and safety coverage was to start, the provincial government removed the WCB enforcement plan and suggested a "farm safety agency" be set up to ensure health and safety.

Farmworkers were now eligible to receive WCB benefits in case of accidents, but the Ministry of Agriculture noted that "Farm employers are, however, exempt from health and safety regulations normally administered by the WCB. The ministry explained that "This exemption has been gained by implementing a Farm Safety Program to be administered by a joint committee comprised of representatives from the B.C. Federation of Agriculture and the WCB."

The CFU was furious. Chouhan called the decision "the most dishonest betrayal" by the Socred government. Rubbing salt in the wound, Labour Minister Bob McClelland boasted that he had intervened in the WCB's decision, and "that the chairman of the WCB has agreed to suspend the compulsory regulation." McClelland even added that "Workers can still complain to the board, the safety committee or to my ministry if they feel conditions are bad."

Just as the provincial government was handing over the health and safety issue to the growers, a coroner's inquest was deciding that the pesticide poisoning death of farmworker Jarnail Singh Deol was "preventable homicide." The coroner's jury blamed Deol's death in October, 1982, on "ignorance and a lack of government legislation."

The 19-year-old farmworker had first gone to the hospital in September 1982 when he felt sick after working in a broccoli field that had just been sprayed with insecticide. He was treated for organo-phosphate poisoning and released after four days. But he was soon back after getting sick from drinking bottles kept near pesticide containers. Released again after observation, Deol returned to work in the fields. On September 15, two days after his release from hospital, Deol was driving a tractor so erratically that the huge tires of the tractor were destroying the broccoli rows. He was sent home and was later involved in a car accident. He was again admitted to hospital and treated for symptoms of pesticide poisoning. Deol's final trip to the hospital came on Oct. 3 after he was picking broccoli in a field that had just been sprayed with Monitor. This time he never recovered, slipping into a coma and dying on Oct. 30, 1982. Deol had so much pesticide in his stomach that a specialist concluded he must have swallowed it. Coffee cups he was known to drink from were found next to containers of pesticide.

Five other workers from the same farm had suffered similar symptoms - nausea, sweating and clammy skin. According to the director of the Boundary Health Unit, the symptoms were the result of gradual poisoning over a long period of time.

The New Westminster jury that investigated Deol's death recommended sweeping improvements in the working conditions of B.C. farmworkers and urged the Workers' Compensation Board be given the power to create and enforce regulations governing the use of pesticides.

"We have lost our son, and that loss we won't be able to recover. But we hope this will keep others from losing their sons in the future," Deol's father Sadhu Singh Deol said. But Sadhu's wishes and the jury's recommendations directly contradicted the Socred Cabinet decision to permit farmers to set up their own "safety agency" and prevent the WCB from issuing enforcement regulations for at least a year.

The CFU responded to the provincial government's turnaround on health and safety regulations with two mass demonstrations in the streets of Vancouver. Deol's preventable death also led the union to set up the Deol Agricultural Education and Research Society for ongoing pesticide education early in 1983.

In July 1984, seven-year-old Dina Pedro fell into an uncovered, unfenced vat of pesticide and drowned. Again a coroner's jury recommended that health and safety regulations be extended to farmworkers. Again the CFU demanded that farmworkers be treated like other workers. Again the government dragged its feet. The Workers' Compensation Board announced it would release proposed health and safety regulations for agriculture for "public input" during the summer of 1985. The plan was to introduce coverage by the end of the year, but the rules were never put into effect.