Ontario Beefs up COVID-19 Farm Inspections

NEWS RELEASE

Ontario Expands COVID-19 Inspections to Farming Operations

Inspections will help protect temporary foreign workers ahead of the growing and harvesting season

January 27, 2021

Labour, Training and Skills Development

Table of Contents

  1. Content
  2. Quick Facts
  3. Additional Resources
  4. Related Topics

TORONTO – The Ontario government is taking additional measures to protect farmworkers during the pandemic by expanding provincewide inspections to farms, greenhouses and other agricultural operations to ensure health and safety measures are being followed.

“Our government is taking action to protect essential temporary foreign workers who may be at a higher risk of contracting COVID-19 during the upcoming growing season,” said Monte McNaughton, Minister of Labour, Training and Skills Development. “We rely on these workers to ensure our grocery store shelves remain stocked and families have food on the table. These inspections will help stop the spread of COVID-19 on farms, and in our communities.”

The inspections will focus on locations that employ temporary foreign workers to ensure they are properly protected from COVID-19 through measures such as:

  • Raising awareness of COVID-19 health and safety requirements through the distribution of information and instruction to farm workers, supervisors and employers;
  • Increasing compliance with workplace health and safety laws, including putting protocols in place to ensure hand hygiene, masking, enhanced cleaning and disinfecting, and proper physical distancing between workers;
  • Enhancing protection for temporary foreign agricultural workers living and working on farming and agricultural operations by ensuring employers are actively screening workers for COVID-19, including completion of a daily COVID-19 questionnaire;
  • Providing compliance information and enforcement of public health measures required under the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Approach to COVID-19) Act, 2020 to help stop the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace and in the community.

Inspectors will also check on engineering controls, movement of workers, whether a workplace safety plan exists as required under the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Approach to COVID-19) Act, 2020, and whether occupational illnesses are being reported as required under the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA).

“Our farmers, agri-food workers, greenhouse operators and food processors are working hard to keep their operations safe while continuing to provide us with a steady and reliable food supply,” said Ernie Hardeman, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. “Since last spring, we have taken several measures to support them, including reinforcing public health protocols, making investments to increase operational capacity and helping to address labour challenges. Agri-food workplace inspections are part of our continued efforts to raise awareness, and prevent and control COVID-19 outbreaks.”

Inspectors may take enforcement action, as appropriate, in response to any violations of the OHSA. Enforcement may range from the issuing of orders to the laying of charges. The maximum penalty upon conviction under the OHSA is $1.5 million for a corporation and $100,000 for an individual. Individuals may also be imprisoned for up to 12 months on conviction.

These efforts build on the provincewide “Stay Safe All Day” campaign announced earlier this month that focuses workplace inspections in areas of high transmission, including break rooms. It also provides resource materials to employers and workers to promote safe behaviour before, during and after work.

Poetry Corner: ” in the interests of productive behaviour”

In the interests of productive behaviour

Motivation
goals
diversity
global inclusion
profit sharing
job enrichment
tasty tidbits to woo the middle class
bribery for the belligerent
soothed with technocratic brews
psychological manipulation
blessed in the holy catacombs of management classes
grovelling at the swill buckets of social mobility
fed by Harvard Business School priest-nobility
sacrosantly selling communion to the highest bidder
you can read all about it on Twitter

Robert K. Stephen


Poetry Corner: “Evangelical Television Special”

Evangelical Television Special

Four hundred dollar shoes from Milan
adorn the religious spreader
brains thick as peanut butter
sticky
impossible to digest
bringing God to the Brazilians aboriginals displaced by hydroelectric development
under a big white tent
the American sponsored God supposed to bring joy for a workplace employees of RCA
the hot breathed babbler graced with the spirit and hefty pay
the godly empires bloat
with the corporate accountants beginning to gloat
after all Satan is smote
Yankee bosses and government bureaucrats knows God encourages a docile worker
peacefully kept in line by a born again tear jerker
making the CIA obsolete
Reds will be in retreat
a veritable Billy Grahamcracker feat

Robert K. Stephen

Poetry Corner: “the historians”

The historians

contained in the pens
the scribes of the rulers
attend to the justifications of the slaughter|
one by one or by the thousands
throats slit and put on meat hooks
and guilty historians white lie in the books
justification of hero crooks
blind to the fact millions were took
by ITT, GM, Livingstone and Cook

Robert K. Stephen

Poetry Corner: “The unofficial mission”

The unofficial mission

Sleek
and
silent
The 52 “Birds” knife up through muggy dense tropical air
and when over their target
spawn the eggs of doom
the captain of one of the planes proclaimed these bastards are getting a load of hot jelly
and since this unofficial no bullshit about it on the telly
but somehow a leak to the Fifth Estate

“Napalm Burns and Maims 700”
in a private conference the generals are most perturbed
and shout about those god damned press bastards
millions with a passing interest gobble
down the evening meal peering at the evening news
and agree with the generals blaming the commies and Cong
with their anti-American propaganda machine
Smith and Jones thought it deserved less attention
after all war is war
they pop open another beer
and watch re-runs of MASH
were was and will
war will always be fun and painless

Robert K. Stephen

Virus #26: Chapter 40 “the good and bad of a short memory”

Chapter 40 “the good and bad of a short memory”

As the last vestige of COVID-19 faded off into viral heaven by the end of 2026 the weary world finally took a credible breath of fresh air. Gradually the world slid into what 2019 normalcy that it could.

The good part about having a short memory is that suffering and pain, including psychological pain in most cases begins to fade. Healing of the mind if you wish to refer to it as such. But there are many where this is not possible particularly if they had lost someone close to them and many of these survivors would be plagued by depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder forever living with that because of that chip in your shoulder which had the effect of having many not seeking psychological or psychiatric assistance lest any diagnosis be recorded on that chip.

The bad of short memory is that it brings about a lack of sharp focus of the past and if you can’t recall the past you won’t be able to improve what wasn’t so good in the past including how the victim count could be reduced the next time a virus struck and the common feeling was not if another virus hits but when.

For almost the entire world this was their first virus pandemic that they experienced. A poll conducted in Canada showed that 84% of the population had not heard of the 1918 influenza and 36% had not heard of SARS, 36% about H1N1 or even the generic bird flu. Perhaps if scientists, physicians and the general population had better knowledge about it somehow some of the historical knowledge might have saved lives. Firstly that a pandemic can kill you! Secondly what went wrong in the 1918 influenza and COVID waves that could have been avoided?

Sadly by the time Virus #26 raised its ugly head what worked from a socioeconomic and medical standpoint in the past was not going to work all that well for Virus #26. It was as if the new Virus #26 was so deadly it was if it was something above and a virus and not subject to the anti-viral protocol. The states throughout the world had very little money to fund what they had funded for the COVIDs so this was a nasty virus that was going to decimate.

British Columbian Blue Mountain Bubbles

British Columbia can produce some excellent sparkling wine. The Blue Mountain Gold Label Brut sparkling wine is made the same way Champagne is produced which is often referred to as the “traditional method”.

Its riot of tiny bubbles is a good sign. On the nose lime, apple, pear with some guava. Very clean and sharp as one would expect a Brut to be. On the palate baked apple crisp, pear with a hint of ginger and toasted oatmeal bread. This sparkler has some power to it with good depth and a long finish. Lower price than entry level champagnes but much better. I can’t say it will improve with age but it will happily hang around until 2024 if you have a proper place to store it. My choice would be to just delve into it now and toast yourself for putting up with all this COVID drama which no doubt has caused most of us some deprivation. Hopefully you are healthy and can celebrate that too. We’ve come this far so what is a mutation of a virus….yet another diversion and battle to fight. And yes this is more bounty from the Okanagan!

(Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars Brut Gold Label, Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars Ltd., Okanagan Falls, British Columbia, $34.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 206326, 12%,750mL, Robert K. Stephen a little birdie told me Rating 92/100).