Tragedy of workplace deaths goes beyond military - Opinion

THE facts about the dangers of being a farmer are staggering.

Every year, year in and year out, more than 100 Canadian farmers or farm workers are killed on the job. That’s two every week, on average, although fatalities tend to be bunched around seeding and harvesting season and for farm kids, during summer months when they are at home from school helping out.

Every year, year in and year out, there are 1,500 or so injuries serious enough to require hospitalization. That’s on average almost 29 serious injuries each week of the year. These are figures compiled by the Canadian Agriculture Injury Surveillance Program at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., and they probably understate the reality.

Read Also

Producers face the reality of shifting grain price expectations

Significant price shifts have occurred in various grains as compared to what was expected at the beginning of the calendar year. Crop insurance prices can be used as a base for the changes.

And of course, they do not take account of injuries to those who work in the processing and packing plants of the nation and likely reflect little of the death and injury visited upon the foreign migrant farm labourers exempt from many labour laws across the country.

Yet except for a bit of publicity during farm safety week, this regular and relentless carnage in the fields and barns of the nations goes unreported, unnoticed outside immediate family and friends and unlamented.

It is considered a risk of the business – tired people using dangerous equipment or simply the inevitable consequence of humans in situations that can kill or maim when something goes wrong.

It is like that in most professions – miners die in underground accidents, forestry workers contend daily with ‘widow makers’, truck drivers die in fiery crashes and civil servants are killed in traffic accidents on the way to work meetings.

Canadians yawn and turn the page.

Well, almost always.

During the past two weeks, the amount of media coverage and political attention paid to the tragic death of submariner Chris Saunders on the Chicoutimi has been overwhelming. Live television covered the body returning to Halifax, the presence of all federal political leaders at the dock, a changed prime ministerial travel agenda, the presence of the defence minister and the governor-general at the funeral – all made this one on-the-job industrial accident the biggest event in the nation for a week.

There is something about the death of military personnel, particularly when on duty abroad, that brings political and media overkill.

It does not diminish the genuine tragedy of an armed forces death to wonder why the nation reacts this way. Is it because Canada has so few combat deaths? Is it because Canadians feel guilty at what they see as shoddy political treatment of the armed forces except in death?

Whatever the reasons, perhaps our politicians should broaden their concern about workplace deaths to recognize that it always is a tragedy.

Perhaps at least once a year when a funeral is being held for a farm fatality, national flags could fly at half mast, the House of Commons could hold a minute of silence, political leaders could make statements about the sacrifice of farmers (cabbies, miners, whatever), the appropriate minister and the governor general could show up at the church in Airdrie, Alta., or Delisle, Sask., to honour the dangers that millions of Canadian workers face every day.

A life lost is a life lost.