Less than 24 hours left for Alberta farmers to submit feedback on new farm-safety law

Saturday is the last day for farmers to provide feedback on the UCP government's plan to replace the former NDP government's farm and ranch safety legislation, which was commonly known as Bill 6.

Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen has been talking to farmers across the province this summer and receiving comments online about what they'd like to see in the new rules the UCP promised during the election campaign this spring.

Since the NDP introduced its farm safety legislation in 2016, Alberta farmers have been subject to occupational health and safety regulations and mandatory coverage by the Workers Compensation Board.

But Dreeshen says he's heard from farmers who would like to go back to carrying private insurance.

They would also like to see the rules better tailored to farm life, he added.

Face-to-face meetings with government officials are now over but farmers can still submit their input online on Saturday.

The online survey closes as of Sunday, Sept. 1.

Meetings 'weren't well advertised'

Alberta Federation of Agriculture president Lynn Jacobson thinks the summer meetings could have been better attended.

"I don't think the consultation process on those types of meetings was very extensive," he said. "They weren't well advertised so people didn't know."

"I guess there's too many opportunities to get certain types of opinions or control the opinion that come out in some of those meetings," Jacobson added.

He said he hopes the province will make sure all farmers have some type of insurance but he's not sure how enforcement would work.

"One of the problems we've seen before that legislation came in was there was probably only about 30, 35 per cent of producers that actually had any type of insurance except liability insurance on their farm policies," he said.

"How are you going to police that? Or know that people have insurance or not?"

The UCP government plans to introduce its "Farm Freedom and Safety Act" later this fall.