Before Saturday’s farm incident, four of the 11 Alberta farm deaths were children.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail
A child driving a forklift in rural Alberta was killed on the weekend after losing control of the machine on a gravel road.
The 10-year-old boy is the fifth child killed in Alberta in a farming incident this year. Three sisters died in a farming incident last month.
The boy was killed Saturday around 11:00 a.m., according to the Killam/Forestburg RCMP. The child lost control of the forklift, it went into a ditch and then rolled, the RCMP said in a statement Sunday. The boy suffered serious injuries and witnesses attempted first aid. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
"Members of the family describe the young boy as having operated the machine in the past and he was familiar with its operation," the RCMP said.
The accident occurred near Killam, about 170 kilometres southeast of Edmonton.The boy's name has not been released.
Laws surrounding children and heavy machinery are lax across the country. In Alberta, for example, one must be at least 14 to operate farm machines on highways. A licence is not required. The minimum-age rule, however, does not extend beyond highways.
In Canada, the agricultural death rate for children under 15 in Canada flatlined between 1990 and 2012, according to the Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting. Further, farm kids are far more likely to be killed or suffer a fatal injury compared to their urban counterparts.
Prior to Saturday's farm incident, Alberta's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner counted 11 farm deaths in 2015. Four of those 11 were children, according to preliminary data updated Nov. 18. One person under 18 died in a farming incident in Alberta last year, as well as 16 adults.
The three sisters who were killed last month lived on a farm near Withrow, Alta. Catie Bott, who was 13, and her 11-year-old twin sisters, Jana and Dara, died after what RCMP described as playing in a farm truck loaded with canola. They were essentially buried.
Farm kids under 18 in Alberta were 83 per cent more likely to suffer severe injury or death when stacked up against city kids between 1999 and 2010, according to a doctoral thesis by Kyungsu Kim at the University of Alberta's School of Public Health.
Further, children living in rural areas, save for First Nations, were 73 per cent more likely to be severely injured or killed than urban kids, according to the same study. The dangers are exacerbated for First Nations children in rural areas. The likelihood of those kids being severely injured or killed is nearly three times higher than city kids, according to Ms. Kim's comprehensive study.
Boys, according to previous studies, are at far higher risk of injury or death than girls.
Alberta's NDP government last week unveiled plans to overhaul legislation governing farms, although it is unclear whether any new rules will address kids working on farms and those who grow up on farms. The government has promised a consultation process.
Family farms are "an essential part of our culture here in Alberta," Lori Sigurdson, Alberta's Minister of Jobs, Skills, Training and Labour, said last week when pressed what her government might do about child safety on farms. The government, she said, must be "respecting family farms … but also making sure that there is safety and fairness. So it is very much a balancing act."
Experts are split on how to address the problem of child safety on farms. The North American Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks, for example, recommends that no child under 7 should be assigned farm tasks. NAGCAT notes adults must account for a child's physical development when allowing them to drive tractors. The organization notes children do not have the same "visual angles," and have a "limited field of view."
The group also highlights that children fatigue more quickly.
"Failure to have strength to push pedals and levers needed to operate a tractor can be extremely dangerous, especially in emergency situations," NAGCAT says on its poster detailing guidelines for children and tractors.
Experts are cautious about rolling out firm guidelines such as minimum ages for operating machinery. Instead, they favour education, both for children, farm families and farm employees. Indeed, policing farms and ranches would be difficult because of their vast expanse. But, at the same time, experts note that it is rare that anyone is held to account when a child is killed in a farming or ranching incident.
CAIR, the organization that tracks agricultural-related deaths, said there were 2,317 fatalities related to agriculture between 1992 and 2012. Of those, 272 of those were children under the age of 15. Another 102 people between 15 and 19 were killed in agricultural incidents during the same stretch.
Meanwhile, the rate of agriculture deaths for kids under 15 across the country fell by an average of 0.8 per cent annually between 1990 and 2015. CAIR does not consider this statistically significant. However, agricultural activities are becoming safer for those over 15. The fatality rate for people working in agriculture between the ages of 15 and 59 dropped by an average of 1.1 per cent per year, CAIR said, determining this statistically significant.