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The bill flat-out scared Alberta’s farmers, said Andre Harpe. “The farming community in the rural areas were talked at, we were told what we were, what was wrong with us,” said Harpe, who grows grain and oilseed near the hamlet of Valhalla Centre, about 500 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

The legislation was seen as a symbol of the distance between Notley’s government and rural Alberta, a policy designed by city slickers with no understanding of life outside the city. And yet, after two years of consultations, major industry players represented by AgCoalition — which includes everyone from Alberta Barley to the Egg Farmers of Alberta — ended up backing the regulations. “We landed in a good place,” said AgCoalition chairman Albert Kamps. “No law is perfect, but a major step was needed to enhance a culture of safety in agriculture,” read a July 12 editorial in The Western Producer.

Photo by Ed Kaiser/Postmedia

It seems a remarkably peaceful outcome, considering how controversial farm safety was just three years ago. But the drama isn’t quite over, nor is it likely to be when the regulations come into effect on Dec. 1 — or even after what promises to be a raucous provincial election in 2019.

Farms and ranches are, by any standard, dangerous places. An average of 17 people died on Alberta farms annually, between 1985 and 2014; about 100 die annually countrywide. Since 2016, when employees came under workers’ compensation, more than 800 claims have been accepted per year; in 2015, there were 339. “In terms of absolute numbers of fatalities, there is no more dangerous occupation,” said Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting’s 2016 report.