Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to the Bloc Quebecois's amendments to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act, because the Liberals seem to have nothing to say about this bill.
Why is this? Because they have a short term vision. They are prepared to set aside Canada's reputation in the food inspection sector in order to be able to appoint their friends to the good positions and to control the entire staffing process. Since this government is unable to create jobs, it feels it must at least find some way of hiring its friends and dispensing a bit of patronage.
That is why the Liberals have nothing to say today. Nobody is rising to speak on the Liberal majority side. We do not hear a peep out of them. We do not know whether they have anything to say in defence of their bill.
I would also like to say that, in the area of food inspection, it is very important that the people who will be working for the proposed agency be completely free of all forms of influence.
There are large companies that are major stakeholders in the food sector and that are in a position to influence political parties, so it is very important to ensure that the agency will be independent. When inspectors do their rounds and make decisions, they must be able to do so with full knowledge of the facts and without undue influence.
The way political parties are funded in Canada, with large companies like Canada Packers being allowed to make contributions of $10,000, $20,000 or $50,000, when the time comes to declare a facility unsanitary, the telephones may well start ringing.
If the agency is not independent of the government because its president has been appointed by the government, there is a chance that inspectors may be prevented from doing their work properly. There will be the same kind of difficulties as in the past.
It is already very difficult in the present context to do this work. I recognize the quality of the people working in this difficult field. Some things have important economic impacts. Let us get our act together now so as not to add the additional burden of political partisanship that the government's bill is paving the way for. When the time comes to make appointments to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, some difficult choices will be compounded by having to consider the political affiliation of candidates.
We have already seen this sort of thing with other boards, in other sectors such as immigration, and parole. A number of years ago, people were appointed to positions simply because of their political affiliation. This always creates problems, because sometimes the calibre of decisions made is adversely affected.
Let us recall some things that have happened in the past. It would perhaps be a good thing for the government to look into the Bloc Quebecois amendment to clause 93 more thoroughly. The purpose of this amendment is to prevent the act from coming into force until a code of conduct and ethics to govern the appointment of employees by the Agency has been prepared jointly by the unions and the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food. In this way, the rules of the game would be very clear and public, and no political interference with the appointment of employees would be possible.
The objective is to do away, for once and for all, with the patronage which could very easily set in within this agency, given the pyramid of appointments set out in the bill. I believe that the appointments set out in the bill for the management of the agency make this bill sufficiently partisan already. Now they want to take away the employees' present autonomy and independence which help build Canada's reputation in the area of food inspection.
Although inspectors may sometimes be perceived as a little inflexible, they are gaining a reputation for quality and honesty. The government is taking a backward step by sacrificing, not necessarily to privatization, but also by trying to lay a path to enable it to appoint people just about everywhere.
If the act is adopted as it stands, I predict that Canada's food inspection system will have taken on a new image before 10 years have passed. Things will be like they used to be before with the harbourmaster appointments. Food inspection appointments will be the same. We will see a return to the old system, where everybody in the agency changes when the government changes.
This kind of situation is entirely inappropriate in an area like food inspection, where we need some degree of independence and a reputation for quality. Decisions must be made sensibly and objectively, not based on the political affiliation of the appointee.
In a way, this would be very insulting to those who have performed these duties in the past. The bill provides no guarantee that incumbents who have performed their duties for 10, 15 or 20 years with the utmost competence will keep their positions. A choice will be made, and since there are no objective criteria, we have no guarantee that in the process, this will not be an occasion to
settle old grievances, as has been known to happen in the past in certain organizations.
Granted, this could also be an opportunity to get rid of people who are perhaps less qualified, but some very competent people could be ousted as well. In the inspection field, someone who does his job conscientiously, as well as his immediate superiors, may be subject to all kinds of pressure. If he has job security, if he has a guarantee that his job will not be on the line whenever he makes a decision, he will do a much better job and stand up for the consumer, for those who in the end will purchase the products.
In my opinion, this bill to establish the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is based on a principle that may be attractive to federalists, and I am referring to the fact that instead of the three intervenors we had in the past, the government finally decided to keep only one, but it overlooked one thing. The provinces already have their own food inspection systems. And as we saw in the case of raw milk cheese, there are also a number of cultural differences between the various parts of Canada.
I mentioned another example connected with food inspection, when a disease is found in a herd of cattle or sheep or whatever. In the past, and this applied to sheep, all animals liable to contract the disease were slaughtered. This worked very well in Quebec, where herds of sheep consist of around 200 or 300 head. The practice, the regulations were changed a year and a half ago, following representations by producers in western Canada. This is understandable, because they have thousands of animals in each herd.
However, now they use quarantine. If a producer has 200 or 300 animals, putting them in quarantine is the equivalent of killing his business. Is there no way to give the provinces jurisdiction in such cases, because respecting the jurisdiction of the provinces would make for an inspection system that would reflect local economic conditions.
The same applies to the fisheries. There is no single rule that works for all Canada-wide systems. We have always found that "wall to wall" does not give satisfactory results. Now, when you add the variable-the possibility of political patronage, political influence in decisions-the regulations and the operating standards will become very malleable. This cannot be if we are to ensure that food is properly inspected in Canada in the future.
Let us return to the underlying principles. Yes, let us try to reduce the number of people involved. Yes, let us respect provincial jurisdiction. However, most importantly, let us give those who have to do the job room to manoeuvre, enough autonomy to make the right choices and to stand up to business when they have to intervene so that, in the end, in five or ten years, Quebec's and Canada's food inspection system will continue to be recognized internationally as one of the best in the world. In a world where the scope of exports continues to grow, we must avoid running the risk of crises or harming our producers in a few years' time.
The winners are the producers and the consumers if inspectors are autonomous in their decisions. I invite the Liberal majority, which is silent this morning, to listen to our arguments and to accept these amendments, particularly the one I was defending.