Saskatchewan farmers cry foul over child labour investigation

Are you f***ing kidding me.....

This is the absolute height of stupidity!! Now kids can't have chores? I am SO glad I'm done with that phase of life. This "new way " of raising children is pure horseshit.

How the hell do these people think farms were built? Ya think my grandfather worked his farm while his eight children sat on their asses in the house, making sure no one got hurt? Not freakin' likely. They all worked from four years up. I see no reason for it to be any different today. Does the little shits good. Heaven forbid...

Crazy. Unless the children are being forced against their will in deplorable conditions the government has no business saying children cannot help out on the family farm.

I spent all my childhood summers until I was almost 16 on my grandparent's farm. My grandfather was primarily an orchardist so I mostly helped with picking fruit but also helped in their immense vegetable garden, tending to the chickens (feeding and gathering eggs) and with the preserving of what was all harvested. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything as it taught me to appreciate where food comes from and more importantly I learned early what hard work really is and the satisfaction of seeing the end result of it.

The truly sad part about this, is this is exactly what kids need while growing up.

This kids already know more about real life than most adults. They know where food comes from, how to raise it, how to process it. They know work ethic, how hard money is to make, etc.

This is the proper way to get kids started, in my personal opinion.

I spent all my childhood summers until I was almost 16 on my grandparent's farm. My grandfather was primarily an orchardist so I mostly helped with picking fruit but also helped in their immense vegetable garden, tending to the chickens (feeding and gathering eggs) and with the preserving of what was all harvested. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything as it taught me to appreciate where food comes from and more importantly I learned early what hard work really is and the satisfaction of seeing the end result of it.

My grandfather was also a fruit farmer in the Niagara region and I also helped out on his farm doing all of those things while visiting. I watched an interview with this family on the boob tube last night and the kids were all doing the usual kids-farm-chores, such as feeding the chickens.

The unusual part about this story is that there is a small meat packing plant on the farm (employs around ten) and the kids were shown operating machinery in the plant. I'm still not sure that helping out in the family business is appreciably different from helping out on the farm, but this story is not quite what it appears to be.

Lots better than being stuck on the electronic nipple all day. This is a family that has close bonds, they know where their kids are, and the kids have a sense of self agency that many kids their age don't because they have helicopter parents.

As far as I can tell, he only issue is around the kids working in the butcher shop - if that really is against the law, just cut out that part of their work.

As far as I can tell, he only issue is around the kids working in the butcher shop -

That's not quite what I saw, either. They were operating semi-automatic machinery ... in a family business, of course.

Me too. My uncle had a chicken farm in South West England. All my summers on the farm, collecting eggs, cleaning out etc. The best part was that I got to use his .22 rifles popping off rats. I was a crack shot at age eleven, good enough to win the local target shoot for under 15's. All the kids worked in the area farms.

It's all a done deal now, as the children have been okayed to work in the family business. They just can't hire any other kids that fall below the government age restriction of 16.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatche ... -1.2731842

Yeah. It was a bit officious to say that it's exploitive to have your children working in a little family business, like that. Bored bureaucrats do stupid ...

What I'd like to know is who's the idiot that made the complaint... the OHS probably had no choice but to investigate?

... probably a competitor ...

Sort of strange.....when I was as young as 10, I was allowed to operate farm equipment on the family farms(maternal grandmother's family and maternal grandfather's). I remember helping out even earlier with one of my granduncle's honey operation. Baling(the old square bales) was something assigned to the younger nieces, nephews and grandchildren. We'd stack, pick up and store in the loft. By the time I was 13, I was helping with the care and butchering of hogs, cattle and chickens .......then it stopped being just a holiday thing when I moved to Manitoba in Junior High

So much danger on a farm... you can get cut, mangled, crushed, kicked, bit and other nasty things that don't come to mind right now.

Don't matter, it was a lot of fun, even though it was work. Playing hide-and seek with the cousins in the barn and swinging from the rafters wasn't bad either.


: I forgot "jumping in the hay from 20 feet up".

Yeah. I did lots of dangerous things on my grandfathers farm that would probably make me cringe, now. Tractor power take-offs, hay bale conveyors, etc. ... never a second thought about standing inches away from them. Most of us survived.

This family was turned in by some freakin' helicopter parent or other, I'll bet.