In the Niagara region and the city of St. Catharines, in the Canadian province of Ontario, pressure is mounting to urgently improve road safety for migrant farm workers. Since 2019, seven migrant farm workers have been killed or seriously injured at five locations across the region, according to advocacy group Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), as reported by trade publication Canadian Occupational Safety. The most recent fatality occurred in June 2026: in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a migrant farm worker cycling home after his shift was struck and killed by a driver who fled the scene. In 2022, another worker was seriously injured while cycling back from the laundromat in St. Catharines.
A pattern of crashes on rural roads
According to MWAC co-director Syed Hussan, migrant farm workers typically have no vehicle of their own and are therefore reliant on rural roads that were never designed for cyclists or pedestrians. Canadian Occupational Safety also points to the position of workers under the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), Canada’s temporary seasonal farm labour scheme: they often stay silent about unsafe conditions for fear of being dismissed. Because hazard reporting depends on workers speaking up themselves, risks can go unnoticed for longer.
Calls for road improvements and a change in the law
In October 2026, MWAC installed extra-large, reflective warning signs at the five crash sites, as well as at the municipal offices of Niagara-on-the-Lake, St. Catharines and Lincoln. The group is also calling for bike paths, better street lighting, safer crossings and lower speed limits on rural roads. More than half of the municipal council candidates across the three municipalities have now signed a pledge to support plans for migrant worker road safety. Advocates are also pressing for an amendment to the Ontario Coroners Act that would make an inquest mandatory following a fatality at an agricultural workplace — something already required in the construction and mining sectors. St. Catharines already formally consults workers on municipal initiatives; Niagara-on-the-Lake says it has already invested in road safety this council term, including speed reductions, but had not yet received MWAC’s formal petition at the time of publication.
Context
The legal gap advocates are pointing to is long-standing and has already been tested in court. Under the Ontario Coroners Act, an inquest is mandatory following a fatal workplace accident in construction or mining, but not in agriculture. After a SAWP seasonal worker was crushed to death on the job by a steel bin and the Office of the Chief Coroner repeatedly declined to call an inquest, the case went before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal in a case against the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services. The tribunal first acknowledged that migrant workers are particularly vulnerable because of how SAWP is structured, but ultimately ruled that the distinction was not discriminatory: inquests would have greater preventive value in construction and mining given the higher risk and wider variety of accident causes in those sectors, according to an analysis by Canadian law firm Miller Thomson. That ruling forms the legal backdrop to the current call for legislative change.
Sources: Canadian Occupational Safety, Miller Thomson LLP.
