Farm workers shouldn't be treated like animals, families says
By Ethan Baron, The Province

Victims' families were angry already when the inquest into the van-crash deaths of three greenhouse workers started Monday. By the time it ended Thursday, they were furious.

Before the coroner's inquest into the March 2007 triple-fatal accident on Hwy. 1 in Abbotsford, family members knew that the improperly licensed, untrained driver of the overloaded, unsafely equipped van had received only a $2,000 fine, a one-year driving ban and four traffic tickets.

During the inquest, they learned that RCMP had recommended 33 criminal charges against driver Harwinder Gill and her husband, Ranjit Gill, with whom she operated a labour-supply and worker-transport company. The most serious of the recommended charges — three counts for Ranjit Gill of criminal negligence causing death — carries a potential life jail sentence.