House of Commons Hansard #180 of the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was firefighters.

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Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:10 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON

Mr. Speaker, I already gave some numbers in a question I answered earlier but I am glad to repeat them.

When we look at the CFIA and its personnel resources, since having been elected in 2006, we have increased the number of inspectors working at the CFIA by at least 700. The unfortunate part is that the member who just asked the question and who desperately wants to see the resources increased for the CFIA voted against those measures.

We have also increased the funding for the CFIA for food safety by hundreds of millions of dollars in budget after budget. The only thing consistent about the member is that he has voted against each and every budget in which we have increased resources for the CFIA.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the member for Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, Aboriginal Affairs; the member for London—Fanshawe, Pensions; the member for Vancouver Kingsway, International Trade.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:15 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate Bill S-11.

Sincerely, and with great deference to the other place or at least with as much deference as I can give the other place, I believe it should have been Bill C-whatever number we would have given it. The bill should have started in this place, not the other place. The 120 days that the other place took should have been spent in this place with us studying the bill, rather than the paltry number of days that the government has decided we should have simply because the other place had it for a period of time.

Whether the other place debates it or not is of no consequence to New Democrats and it is certainly of no consequence to this member for Welland. What is of consequence at the end of the day is the House debating the people's legislation, because this is the people's House and this is indeed where the legislation should have started. That is why I have called the government to account on that particular aspect.

To get back to the bill itself, at one point in time we had an emergency debate, and I will not use the reference the minister suggested and the colourful language that he used to describe the debate. At one point in time I actually said to my friends across the way that when one cannot take yes for an answer, it is still yes. It was yes then and it is yes now.

The unfortunate part for my colleagues across the way is that they could not find a way to say yes to any of the suggestions that this side of the House had. According to the parliamentary secretary, they deferred to the “experts”, when indeed it was simply a question of someone parroting verbatim the good things that the PMO suggested they parrot.

Ultimately one gets back to Sheila Weatherill's report. I had the great pleasure of serving with my colleague from Malpeque on the subcommittee on listeriosis and that was when I first came to know about food safety. I came to know first-hand the devastating effects that food safety, when it is not followed in the way that it needs to be, can have on Canadians. We saw that with the great tragedy in 2008 when those folks died from listeriosis.

That is why it was so eminently important for us on this side to make this legislation as good as it possibly could be. That is the one shortcoming we find on this side. What we had said from the beginning was that we would be supportive, encouraging, helpful, proactive and bring forward what we believed would be good suggestions. We held to our word along the way, even though the government curtailed the amount of time we actually had to work on it.

When I was on the subcommittee during 2008, the government decided to call on Ms. Weatherill and do a parallel investigation. The irony of the investigation, which by the way cost the Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars, was that all but a handful of the recommendations were exactly the same, almost uniquely identical. We saw the same things.

One of the things that we saw in the CVS, the compliance verification system, that Sheila Weatherill also saw was that the compliance verification system was flawed and in need of “critical improvements related to its design, planning and implementation”. She went on to say it was “implemented without a detailed assessment of the resources available to take on these new [CVS] tasks”.

It was not just a question of adding up the numbers of how many people were there. Ms. Weatherill said that we had to audit the design, the planning and the implementation. That is what recommendation number seven said. It was not that we go out to PricewaterhouseCoopers, a nice place that adds them up and says, “Today, there are 22. Tomorrow there will be 24, and now we are done.”

The entire system needed to be looked at because the CVS was a pilot project. That is all that it was, leading up to 2008. It was started in 2005 by the previous government as an attempt to do food safety differently. There was nothing wrong with the pilot project. There was nothing wrong with making that attempt. What was wrong was verifying that the verification system actually verified what it was intended to work on. No one ever answered that question because no one audited it.

We are still left with the question hanging over our heads. Was the compliance verification system actually verified to see if it does what it was intended to do in the first place? We added up the number of folks who might be in it and we received a number. The government still does not really tell us the actual number. It uses this number of 700.

Let me offer a little help to the government. There are 170 new inspectors in the ready-to-eat meat sector. That came out of two places: the subcommittee that recommended that additional people were needed in that field and Sheila Weatherill who said the same thing. Since we are in the spirit of being nice, let me commend the minister for taking on and fixing the ready-to-eat meat sector and putting 170 new inspectors there.

That did not happen at XL. None of those new inspectors who went to the ready-to-eat meat sector are in those abattoirs. There are no additional inspectors in any of those abattoirs. The XL meat plant certainly has more today than two years ago. It simply filled the vacancies of the folks who left, because there is a great turnover in that plant as all of us now know. Sheila Weatherill actually went through that.

Carole Swan, who at the time was the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the actual person in charge, said about this audit, which was supposedly conducted and the one that the government stands today and still defends as an audit, that:

They didn't conduct it as an audit. An audit is a very specific process. It was a detailed review.

Number seven of Sheila Weatherill's report has not been completed. Parts of it have been done. The government counted the number of people but it did not audit the design, the plan or the implementation because it never asked PricewaterhouseCoopers to do that. It did what it was asked to do and that is fair. It is fair for the government to say that it counted the number of people but it is unfair for the government to suggest that it did a strategic audit of the recommendation, which was fundamentally critical to ensuring that the CVS actually worked. We can have as many people as we like in CVS but if it does not work, it does not mean anything.

Consequently, the government has not lived up to fulfilling all of the recommendations of the Weatherill report, let alone the recommendations coming out of the subcommittee. Some of the recommendations were done and some were not. Some of the recommendations were just left out because the government did not really like them.

When it comes to resourcing, the government loves to tell us one number and play with another one. Let me quote again for the House what we know to be true. On May 8 of this year the Minister of Agriculture said, “Planned Spending is declining by approximately $46.6 million and 314 FTE’s”, which in human resource jargon means full-time equivalences. What that means is that over the next two years there will be 314 less jobs now than the before.

The government loves to tell us about the $100 million, but it neglects to tell us that it is actually over five years, not this year. It neglects to tell us that it has actually only spent $18 million of that $100 million already. It should have spent far more than that because it has been out there for over a year. The resourcing that the Conservatives' continually talk to us about is not always wholly there because it is the jig of the number. They throw numbers out and somehow they might look similar or perhaps not.

We do know the facts because we did read the budget, although I sometimes wonder about my friends on the other side. We did read that lovely book that the government gave us in budget 2012 that says the three-year outlook for food safety indicates a projected cut of $56.1 million annually.

That is the Conservative's budget. I am not making it up. I am just reading the stuff they gave us. Of course, if the other side is now telling us the book is not true, that they no longer believe that page of the budget is going to be enacted, then I think they would have to amend it. Surely they would have to retract it and tell us something altogether different. However, they have not done that.

It is unfortunate, as this is a bill that the House seems to want to pass. I have heard my colleagues from the far end and my colleague for Guelph, who works on the committee with us in the spirit of co-operation to make food safety the priority that we all believe it is. This is about safe food for Canadians, for the children and people out there who may be immune suppressed and for the elderly who we saw get sick once before and some in fact died. We want to ensure that we do not have that happen again. All members in the House believe this to be true.

Therefore, in the spirit of co-operation, the official opposition went to committee and told the government side that we could help make the bill better. We put amendments forward because we wanted to help make the bill better. No one person or one party is blessed with all the best ideas. Unfortunately, some may think that perhaps they are. The irony is that we all know that.

I know the member but I always mispronounce his lovely riding, so I won't go down that road. It is a wonderful place in New Brunswick, Tobique—Mactaquac. Every now and again Glaswegians can get their mouths around funny words. However, it was with that spirit of working together that we entered into making sure that this legislation came back to this place in an expeditious fashion, unlike the other place that hung onto it and then went on vacation for the summer, which is how important its members thought it was. They went on vacation.

Meanwhile, some of us worked on the special co-op committee during the summer, which was our vacation. I see some of my colleagues from all sides of the House who were there working. It was the members of the House who went to work during the summer and the members of the other place could indeed have done that. If they did not want to do that, they should have passed the bill to us.

There were a number of amendments that we put forward. Some were as simple as defining a container. In the legislation it says “containers” and then goes on to define a cargo container. What is a cargo container? Is it a box car? Is it a shipping hold? We suggested that we should better define it and talk about pails, totes and baskets to give it further definition. We thought that would be understandable so that when folks saw the legislation they would get a sense of what it was about, rather than having to wait for the regulations to come out for the definitions.

The Conservatives said no, but I have to give them credit, they had a reason. For the first four amendments we put forward they had some reason why they did not like it. However, on the other seven amendments, they just voted no. They did not seem to have any reason or they ran out of reasons, I am not sure which.

Clearly, the opposition side of the agriculture committee, including the member for Guelph who was supportive, felt that the two responsible factors were the compliance verification system and the audit. We felt an audit should be done now because in five years when we go back and look at the system, the problem is that we may not know where we started.

As I said in committee, if I want to drive to Edmonton and I do not know where I am when I start, in five years from now I will be somewhere. It might Edmonton but it might be in Malpeque, which is a wonderful place in Prince Edward Island. When I get there I know the member for Malpeque will say to me, “Member for Welland, you actually drove in the wrong direction. Turn around and go back the other way and then you will get to Edmonton”. However, I would then get there in ten years instead of five years.

Therefore, doing an audit now would give us a benchmark of where we are and where we are going to start from. In five years, we would know if we were better, worse or the same, and whether we need as many inspectors. Part of the government's problem is that when we say those things, it thinks we want to have more inspectors in five years.

Maybe we need fewer. Maybe the system is working so well and is so efficient that there are too many people doing that and we need to transfer them to where they are not doing quite as well. That would be the value of the resource. That would be the value of legislation.

Of course, my friends across the way on the government side just voted no. They did not really have a reason. They just voted no. Then when we suggested whistleblower protection, their response was that the Criminal Code covers that off.

We heard the parliamentary secretary say that the Criminal Code covers tampering but that it is not the best way to do it. Instead, it should be in the legislation. We agree. We think that is the best way to do it, as we do with whistleblower protection.

In the last crisis we just faced, there were workers who said that had they been protected, they might have come forward sooner, and we may not have had a crisis. That is “may”. We are not certain. However, any opportunity that would have prevented it would have been good for the cattle ranchers across the country. They suffered needlessly because of the failure of someone in the system. Whistleblower protection may have indeed helped those ranchers not suffer the unintended consequence of what happened when it came to that crisis.

We saw the government rely on the Criminal Code, but it did not rely on it for this one aspect of the bill because it believed it was better, more expeditious and made more sense to do it that way.

As for fundamental protection for people who want to come forward and tell the government something it ought to know, it is telling them to take their chances in the courts and see if they can convince a crown attorney to go ahead with the charge and see if they can get a conviction. What the government did not talk about was whether they could get their jobs back afterwards. They are more likely to be fired while going through the court system. Of course, if people won that one, they would have to go through civil proceedings to try to get their jobs back. Therefore, they would go to court twice, and along the way, would have to pay for lawyers.

However, if the Conservatives had put simple whistleblower protection into the act, it would have talked about people who make vexatious claims against a company because they are mad at the boss. This was about real claims to help prevent another food crisis for Canadians across the country.

We want to make food safety better. We want to help this legislation be the best it can be for two simple reasons. The first is that this may be the last opportunity for quite some time to do something with respect to the food safety act as we amend three acts into one. More importantly, this is about food safety for Canadian families, children, the elderly, and all of us. All of us eat. We all eat differently. Some of us graze, and some of us do not.

At the end of the day, this was about making fundamentally good legislation. It started out as decent legislation. It could have been great legislation, because all of the hands at the committee were indeed onside to make it so. The government side brought forward a bill that in its sense was pretty decent. All sides of the House at that committee, including my friend from Guelph, were bound and determined to try to make it better. There were no egregious amendments or poking sticks in eyes. There was none of that. This was about making it better from the day it showed up at committee. The unfortunate part is that as good as it is, the bill could have been so much better than it is. That is the shame of not having all sides work together.

When the government puts a hand out and asks that all sides work together, it should recognize when the hand comes from the other side to work with it to make it better. Our hand was extended to the government to make it better. Unfortunately, it decided to say no, and that is truly unfortunate.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:35 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Welland for his thoughtful and quite accurate observations and for his efforts, and the efforts of his party, to make it better.

During those hearings, motions were brought. I debated them and argued them. Members of the official opposition, including the member for Welland, argued and debated them. They were all trying to make it better. There were points when the government members did not even participate in the debate. They were not interested. They just called on the chair to call the question. It was absolute intransigence at the highest point of arrogance.

When asked about the adequacy of resources and training for CFIA at XL, Bob Kingston, from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, said:, “The answer is actually simple. The CFIA cannot afford to deliver training any faster and does not have enough inspectors to relieve those away while being trained. As well, resources are often diverted to address crises, which further derails training”.

Does it not make sense to have a third-party audit so that we know what their needs are?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:35 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Of course it does, Mr. Speaker. It is one of the fundamental questions that has been asked for quite some time.

It is true, and the government can check the facts, that not everyone in every abattoir across the country who should be compliant in CVS , the compliance verification system, is trained to be compliant in CVS. Yet CVS is the foundation, the cornerstone, the backbone of the food safety system the government is relying on. If it is the cornerstone of the system, then everyone has to be that cornerstone. We cannot have some who are not. That is the problem. A full audit would have told the government how to get it done. If the government had enacted it back then, it would be done by now.

Yes, the government has added inspectors, but what it has not done is made them all compliant with CVS. We know that to be true, and the government knows that to be true.

If we are not able to judge whether it has been done correctly, the government should just do the audit. It will cost some money. It will save a lot of heartache in the end, when there is not another crisis, because the system will have worked the way it is supposed to work.

Therefore, I would again ask the government side, through the parliamentary secretary to the minister, to just do the audit. Let us not pretend one was done. Just go ahead and quietly do the audit, show the results, and all will be well.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

November 19th, 2012 / 4:35 p.m.

NDP

Hélène LeBlanc NDP LaSalle—Émard, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech and his work as the agriculture critic for the official opposition.

Throughout the XL Foods crisis, we noted the working conditions, lack of training and high turnover of employees. I believe that an even more in-depth audit by a third party would have been worthwhile.

I would like to hear more from my colleague about the lack of resources. He referred to this when speaking about training. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is said to be in dire need of resources.

I would like to hear more about his concerns in this matter.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:35 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that what we have seen over the last while when it comes to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, going back to the listeriosis crisis and the lack of inspectors, is a rush to try to make some changes. There was not a holistic approach taken as to what is needed elsewhere.

When Sheila Weatherill's report came out, and in fact, when the subcommittee's recommendations came out, we said exactly the same thing about the need to do an audit of CVS to improve the program. We actually said that as parliamentarians. It was not done. If it had been done then, we would have had the folks trained and the proper resources in place. Perhaps we would not have seen another crisis.

The only good part of the crisis, if there is a good part, is that to date, no one has passed away. That cannot be said for the 2008 listeriosis crisis, when 23 people died. People cannot measure that crisis against another, nor should they. This is about a system that did not live up to its expectations. It failed. We need to fix that piece. The fix is in front of us. The issue is whether there is a willingness to take that fix and make it so that the system actually operates as it should.

The decision is the government's alone. We are simply saying to the government that it has an opportunity. It should take the opportunity. The system will be better for it. More importantly, Canadians will actually thank them for it.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the member for Welland's remarks, because he hit the nail right on the head in terms of the audit.

The government continues to fail, and I have to ask him why. Why do the Conservatives continue to misrepresent the fact that they have not done a complete audit, which the Weatherill report asked for, as did the member for Welland and others in the work they did on the listeriosis study? Why do the Conservatives continue to misrepresent the facts in that regard?

They talk about the numbers they have added. In my particular area, what we are seeing from CFIA is a heavy downloading of costs to the farm community. We are seeing fees go up. We are seeing that on the weekend, when CFIA inspectors willingly wanted to work for time off, farmers now have to pay time and a half on Saturdays. The system was working, and the government changed it.

Why does the government continue to misrepresent the facts, and why would it not work with opposition parties to make the bill better? Why does it have to be so intransigent?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Malpeque, whom I had the great pleasure of working with on that committee in 2009.

It is bewildering why the Conservatives continue to say that they did something, when Carole Swan said that they did not. I find that absolutely astounding. I understand that the government spent some money on a particular piece when it went to PricewaterhouseCoopers. At the end of the day, they were asked to do something specific, so they did it. It was an arithmetic exercise. They counted up some people and gave the number. They did not tell them where or what they would actually do.

The only thing I can think of is that the government deluded itself into believing that it did what it thought it was supposed to do, even though we have continually said that it did not. Perhaps it does not want to hear results that mean it may have to invest more money. Instead of the $56 million it is withdrawing over the next budget year, it will actually have to put it there and maybe add more. Perhaps the government does not want to hear that either in its year of austerity. However, austerity and food safety are two terms that should never come in close contact with one another.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to work with Malcolm on this file on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. I have a lot to learn and I continue to learn.

I would like him to talk about fines. This bill provides for steeper fines. Will the imposition of harsher and stricter penalties help strengthen our food safety?

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Acting Speaker Conservative Barry Devolin

Before I go to the member for Welland, I would remind all hon. members not to refer to their colleagues by their given names, first or last.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:40 p.m.

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

Clearly, Mr. Speaker, some members on the government side are working with us. The fines have increased. There is nothing wrong with increasing the fines. The issue becomes what they do with them when half the time they do not impose them and the rest of the time they reduce them. They can charge whatever they like, but if they do not intend to apply them, they are of no value other than that it looks good on a piece of paper. It is unfortunate that the Conservatives have decided to do that rather than be willing to enact the fines rather than just increase the money.

Safe Food for Canadians ActGovernment Orders

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak to Bill S-11, the modernization of Canada's food safety system. This is, undoubtedly, a timely issue, especially given that we are hardly two months removed from the beginning of the largest beef recall in Canadian history caused by a collapse in monitoring and sanitation measures at XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta.

I also note that there has been no delay in addressing the bill. I last rose and spoke to Bill S-11 on October 22, not even a month ago. In fact, and I will address this through my remarks, I believe we may have proceeded a little too quickly, by only a few days perhaps, for how serious a matter this is.

We know there is widespread support for modernizing our food safety system. When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was first created in 1997, it was understood that the agency was only the first step in a multi-step process that also involved consolidating its legislative framework. The first attempt to do this was by a Liberal government in 2004 through Bill C-27 and it has been tried a couple of times since.

Witnesses who appeared before the committee generally spoke well of the need to proceed with this legislation but were also sure to voice their concerns, concerns that we share and that are important to be heard because of how serious an issue food safety remains. When it is time to vote, we will support Bill S-11. However, it is important that our concerns and the concerns of stakeholders across the country get raised and discussed.

We all know the context that makes this legislation more potent: the remarkable failure at XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta, where beef left the facility destined for the United States contaminated with E.coli 0157, a harmful pathogen that can cause serious illness when consumed by humans, especially those most vulnerable, like young children and seniors. The facts are pretty clear. Whether the Americans caught it first and let us know or the CFIA discovered it independently on September 4, Canadian officials would have known that day that there was an outbreak of E.coli at Establishment 38. Right then and there, bracketing should have caught any further contaminated meat. It did not.

During testimony by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, he stated:

The initial find, the problem, was that they had a discovery but then had not bracketed properly. That's taking production on either side of the affected batch out of the food cycle as well. They had not done that, and until CFIA was back in there doing the trend analysis, that was not discovered.

The government can argue that none of these shipments that the Americans stopped and that XL Foods tested on September 4 got out, but that E.coli contaminated meat from XL Foods made it to store shelves means it is playing word games and that tainted meat from that batch or not made it to consumers and made 18 Canadians ill. Semantics does not take the meat off the shelves. It was a recall issued on September 16, about two weeks later, that did.

The minister makes it clear in his statement that meat got out because XL Foods was not bracketing, nor was it monitoring E.coli trends. Why not? More still, we ask day after day what the delay was to no avail, until eventually we heard that only under Bill S-11 would inspectors finally have the power to compel conveyors and processors to supply the necessary documentation requested by inspectors. That is curious.

I will remind members that subsection 13(2) of the Meat Inspection Act states quite clearly:

The owner or person in charge of a place or vehicle referred to in subsection (1) and every person found in that place or vehicle shall give the inspector all reasonable assistance to enable the inspector to carry out his duties and functions under this Act and shall furnish the inspector with any information the inspector may reasonably require with respect to the administration or enforcement of this Act and the regulations.

That is the law now.

It also states in paragraph 13(1)(c) that inspectors may:

...require any person to produce for inspection, or for the purpose of obtaining copies or extracts, any book, shipping bill, bill of lading or other document or record that the inspector believes on reasonable grounds contains any information relevant to the administration or enforcement of this Act or the regulations.

That is the law now without Bill S-11.

Moreover, as recently as this past February, the CFIA made its regulations concerning inspectors' powers clear through the processor's guide to inspection, reinforcing the legal requirement to provide information to and assist an inspector when requested.

When I shared this concern with the CFIA president, George Da Pont, he assured me that while the Meat Inspection Act presently does provide these powers for inspectors, the new bill adds phrases like “timely” to the act, which will create an authority to provide documents in a certain timeframe.

Both acts have consequences for non-compliance and the addition of “timely” would not have changed what happened. In fact, much of our concern with Bill S-11 comes from what is not written and what will be incorporated by reference later on. We may very well see the appropriate timelines put in place but there is no way to know that now.

We are supporting this legislation because the language surrounding inspector powers will slightly strengthen and be made more clear but it remains abundantly clear that this bill is not a magic bullet that would have prevented 18 Canadians from falling ill last month.

What we all really require to augment our food safety system is the knowledge that the CFIA is adequately supported with sufficient staff and resources. I am not the sole voice on this issue.The only objective way to achieve this is through an independent comprehensive resource audit, such as the one requested by the independent investigator into 2008's listeriosis outcome, Sheila Weatherill. In her report the following year, which addressed measures necessary to help prevent another outbreak like the one in 2008 that killed 23 people and made many others sick, Ms. Weatherill was concerned with some of the information she received and stated the following:

Due to the lack of detailed information and differing views heard, the Investigation was not able to determine the current level of resources as well as the resources needed to conduct the CVS activities effectively. For the same reason, we were also unable to come to a conclusion concerning the adequacy of the program design, implementation plan, training and supervision of inspectors, as well as oversight and performance monitoring.

A full account of resources is absolutely necessary to not only ensure the adequacy of staffing but the effectiveness of training and allocation. I think members opposite are really concerned that we want to employ hundreds more inspectors. While we were justifiably concerned with their cuts to inspectors and the CFIA in the budget, some $56.1 million in cuts, which ostensibly have an impact on front-line resources, we thought they would like to know, that they need to know, if there are real efficiencies that could be attained once we know if everyone is adequately trained and where there can be redistribution. It is the smart way to run a business.

Given her concerns, Ms. Weatherill went on to recommend:

To accurately determine the demand on its inspection resources and the number of required inspectors, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency should retain third-party experts to conduct a resources audit. The experts should also recommend required changes and implementation strategies. The audit should include analysis as to how many plants an inspector should be responsible for and the appropriateness of rotation of inspectors.

That is pretty clear. We know that the CFIA did not do this because, in 2010, then CFIA president, Carole Swan, indicated that while it retained PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct a review, she was very clear when she stated:

They didn't conduct it as an audit. An audit is a very specific process. It was a detailed review .

This means that not all the Weatherill recommendations were complied with. This means that even before the government's cuts in this year's budget, neither the agency nor the government had any clear impression of its resources and how best to allocate them. While cutting blindly may not have led to the E.coli contamination in Brooks, it certainly will not help the already compounded problem of inspectors in facilities who still do not have the necessary training in the compliance verification system, nor will it facilitate the transition of individual meat, fish and other agricultural product inspectors into a consolidated Jack of all trades and masters of none.

This very issue was highlighted during the Senate hearings on Bill S-11 when Bob Kingston, the president of the Agriculture Union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, told members of that committee:

You will be interested to know that in the XL plant, only a small portion of the inspectors are actually trained in CVS. That is right; for more than four years after CVS was introduced, most inspectors there have not been trained in how to use it. Why, you might ask? The answer is actually simple. The CFIA cannot afford to deliver training any faster and does not have enough inspectors to relieve those away while being trained. As well, resources are often diverted to address crises, which further derails training.

To me, this is a clear statement that the CFIA lacks the resources and support to carry out its mandate.

According to the CFIA's website, the compliance verification system reads:

The CVS is a task-based inspection tool that:

is based on the CFIA’s regulatory requirements,

provides clear and consistent direction to CFIA inspectors,

is capable of adapting to rapidly-changing program requirements, and

can be applied to any inspection activity, in any commodity’s inspection program.

This is particularly important to me because it is not only verification of industry compliance but of consistency in inspection. In fact, a specific example on the CFIA website, and I can provide the website address to my colleagues opposite if they would like to check it out for themselves, reads:

For example: inspectors must regularly check a plant’s sanitation records, employee hygiene, cooking temperatures, ingredient controls, and lab results for pathogens like Listeria, Salmonella, and E. coli.

Instead of the authority to request documents within a certain time, which they had, what it sounds like the inspectors really needed to prevent the outbreak at XL was adequate training on CVS and enough staff to cycle them off while training. This revelation strikes right at the heart of the often repeated myth that the Conservative government has hired more inspectors than ever. It can have record numbers of inspectors and even if we believed more inspectors were hired, which no one does anymore, how can they perform their functions fully without adequate training?

It is another clear indication that while the government is willing to build a car, it will not pay to hire a proper driver or, in this case, train one. Instead, it is adding an additional burden to inspectors who are responsible for keeping us safe.

Mr. Kingston continued in his testimony to say:

This situation is not limited to XL. As a matter of fact, ...we found the exact same scenario throughout Quebec.

This is yet another example of industry self-policing gone wrong because the CFIA is not adequately resourced to verify compliance. Does the government even know how many of its inspectors are adequately trained?

Since the beginning of October, when the hon. member for Toronto Centre and our leader, wrote to the Auditor General to commence an immediate audit and our now retired colleague from the other place, Senator Robert Peterson, moved an amendment for an audit function to be placed in the bill, we have argued the absolute necessity of this comprehensive study into the CFIA. Despite all of this, when I proposed an amendment to commence an immediate and comprehensive resource audit at committee, the Conservative members voted it down. All this, despite the fact that there was not one witness who thought it was a bad idea.

They love quotes on the other side. Karen Proud of the Retail Council of Canada said:

I can't see that our members would object to such an audit. It's always a good thing to look internally at whether you have the right resources to match your requirements and your mandates and, especially given a new piece of legislation, whether you've matched up the right resources.

Similarly, during a meeting of the Senate committee on agriculture and forestry, Mr. Albert Chambers, the executive director of the Canadian Supply Chain Food Safety Coalition argued:

It has become very common in the food industry to use an accredited certification body to provide a third-party audit to a food safety management system.

In fact, at the June 21 meeting of the same committee, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food replied in response to a question about a third party audit that he would entertain the idea. In the weeks that followed the E. coli outbreak, he strangely became more and more resistant to the idea.

Sadly, Conservatives on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food voted against every single amendment put forward by opposition members. As a matter of fact, there were not many. We used our opportunities judiciously, hoping to work collaboratively to make good legislation better.

Despite asking us to work with them on a bill that everyone agrees is a good start, the Conservative members refused to follow their own express wishes. In a spirit of mindless partisanship, they even blocked an amendment of mine that would have seen the clock start ticking for the five-year limited review, which is there now and the act does provide for, immediately upon royal assent instead of waiting an unknown number of months until the rest of the act came into effect.

There was not an inch given to improve the bill. Despite our co-operation, Conservative committee members were determined to vote against us at every turn. Towards the end of the study, I requested two additional days for us to speak to departmental officials and get their answers to questions and concerns posed by other witnesses and for us to shape strong, wholesome amendments to further improve a bill that we all support. It was so important to our food security that we needed the opportunity to get it right and to address all of our concerns the first time around. Alas, that never happened.

However, we remain optimistic that on some day, this arrogant, dismissive way of the government will give way to better, more responsive legislation.

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5 p.m.

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell Ontario

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture

Mr. Speaker, I will make a few comments about my colleague's speech.

First, he felt that more time was needed. He did a real disservice to committee members when he moved his motion on the last day witnesses appeared before committee. We had told our colleague from Guelph and other opposition MPs that if they needed extra meetings, we were ready to book them. We would do it at whatever time of night or day we could possibly arrange for all committee members to come together. We were sincere in that offer, but the member did not ask until the closing moments of the final meeting with witnesses. Only then did he say that he needed more time, that we needed to have more witnesses.

I think we have all agreed that this legislation needs to move forward to better protect Canadians. I would like to know why this member did not ask for more meetings when he was offered more meetings earlier in the committee process.

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5 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, in fact I did ask for more meetings. I asked for two more days.

What I suggested was that because a lot of the stakeholders came in first, they never had the opportunity to place their concerns before the experts who should have been at the committee at the same time so that those questions could be answered.

What is really frightening is that this is exactly the kind of attitude demonstrated at committee; it is dismissive. Instead of working collaboratively, Conservatives just go on the attack, notwithstanding any gesture of goodwill and good legislation.

I am hearing from more and more Canadians, and certainly the people of Guelph, that they are sick and tired of this dismissive, arrogant attitude of the Conservative government, displayed right here in dealing with this legislation.

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5 p.m.

NDP

Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Agriculture insists that this legislation will provide inspectors with the power to get information from companies in a more timely fashion.

Is it not true, I ask my hon. colleague, that the powers have always existed under section 13 of the Meat Inspection Act? Could my hon. colleague comment on that.

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5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, my friend is absolutely correct. Section 13 of the Meat Inspection Act says unequivocally and very clearly, as all inspectors and industry were reminded in bulletins sent out as recently as this February, that the CFIA has the power to request and the industry must comply and accommodate that request.

How do we know the current legislation is adequate on that particular issue? The CFIA shut the plant down. There was non-compliance and the CFIA shut the plant down. That is proof that it works. Proof that it works is the fact that there are hundreds of abattoirs out there that do comply with CFIA regulations and do honour the requests of CFIA inspectors.

The existing legislation on that point adequately addresses the concern now, and this legislation will do little to improve that point.

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5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the factual remarks by the member for Guelph. He laid out quite a number of facts that the government has basically misrepresented time and time again. One of those facts concerns section 13 of the Meat Inspection Act, where the the government has always had the authority it requires. It tries to portray Bill S-11 as needed to deal with the latest serious food recall in Canada, the second under the present minister's watch. The government really had the authority.

Bill S-11 was not a priority for the government, although it is now claiming that it was, because the government put it in the Senate. It was not an issue then. It was just luck that it happened to be there when this crisis developed.

The second major area where there seems to be government messaging that misrepresents the facts is that of auditing, which is important not just for what has happened but also going forward.

Could the member enlighten us why the government constantly misrepresents the number of inspectors and the facts by claiming it did an audit when it really did not do the kind of audit the Weatherill report called for? Why would the government go to these lengths to say it did something that it really did not do?

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5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, it absolutely befuddles everyone on this side of the House and every Canadian why the government opposes a third-party audit. Private industry does it. Other corporations, though not crown corporations, do it.

I can only surmise the following. We have seen the Auditor General audit the F-35s and embarrass the heck out of the government for its misstatements and hiding the real costs of the F-35s. Kevin Page, the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, did a study and disclosed the facts to the government. The government was embarrassed again.

The government does not want an independent audit because it will lose control of the messaging, that fine, unequivocal, unadulterated, absolute control over messaging. The Conservatives fear that. They fear that a third-party audit will disclose things they do not want to hear and that they will lose the messaging.

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5:05 p.m.

NDP

Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to work with the member for Guelph on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Could he talk about the addition that would protect whistleblowers? Workers at XL Foods may have noticed problems at the plant but were afraid to voice their concerns. Could my colleague provide more information on that?

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5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the official opposition for raising the whistleblower amendment at committee. My colleague is quite right, that if whistleblower legislation were put in this legislation, it would establish a threshold of proof that is not absolute, in other words, not beyond a reasonable doubt. It would establish on a balance of probabilities whether someone has violated the law. That would have been helpful because a whistleblower wants to blow the whistle without fearing that his or her employer would suddenly be charged, possibly with criminal charges. Employees would be liberated by such whistleblower legislation in the bill, knowing that they could blow the whistle and that any consequences as a result of their employer's failure to do something would result in non-criminal charges. I am saddened that the government has not included whistleblower legislation in Bill S-11.

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5:10 p.m.

NDP

Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe NDP Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his speech. He mentioned that amendments suggested in committee were simply dismissed, even though the opposition parties worked hard to develop those amendments.

Earlier today we were debating Bill C-44. What I find funny is that although everyone agreed on the principle of the bill, the opposition's suggested amendments were also rejected, without any real argument or debate.

That is unfortunate, because the NDP has been clear that Bill S-11, as it stands right now, might not have prevented the major beef recall we had recently—the largest beef recall in Canada's history—or the 22 deaths resulting from the 2008 listeriosis crisis.

The amendments proposed by the opposition deserve to be seriously considered, which the Conservative government did not do. That is unfortunate. I would like my colleague to comment on that.

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5:10 p.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend raises a good point, something that this Parliament was victimized with the moment the Conservatives gained power in 2011, that they we will do things their way or no way. They are not interested in reasoned amendments, not on omnibus Bill C-38 or Bill C-45, and not on this food legislation Bill S-11.

There were many thoughtful amendments brought forward, not for the purpose of stage playing or any purpose than to make a good bill better, as my friend from Welland said. However, the Conservatives are not interested. As I said earlier, even at committee when I was moving my amendments, there was no response from the governing party. The Conservatives just asked the chair to call the question because they were not interested in discussing it.

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5:10 p.m.

NDP

Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Joliette.

I rise today to speak to Bill S-11, An Act respecting food commodities, including their inspection, their safety, their labelling and advertising, their import, export and interprovincial trade, the establishment of standards for them, the registration or licensing of persons who perform certain activities related to them, the establishment of standards governing establishments where those activities are performed and the registration of establishments where those activities are performed.

The bill would streamline a range of existing food safety legislation under one act. Among other legislation, it would repeal and replace the Fish Inspection Act, the Meat Inspection Act, the Canada Agricultural Products Act and the food provisions under the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act.

Bill S-11 would raise the potential maximum fine for food safety infractions to $5 million, a 20-fold increase over previous maximum fines. This of questionable value, given that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency does not have a rigorous history of enforcing fining of companies due to limited resources. In 2011, no fines exceeded 20% of the maximum fine.

The bill would streamline inspectors' powers and procedures for all types of food. Previously, these were different according to whether the product was fish, meat or another agricultural product.

The bill would provide for the availability of official certification for exported foods and also would require food importers to comply with the licensing regime. It would allow the CFIA to suspend or revoke the licence of an importee instead of prosecuting for non-compliance. This could provide for more timely response in the advent of international recall.

The bill would allow for traceability requirements to be introduced through regulation at a later date. The New Democrats support enhanced traceability, particularly for meat, fish and fresh produce in the advent of a recall.

Finally, the bill includes a prohibition against tampering with products or selling products that might risk the health of Canadians or that have been subjected to a recall.

However, we in the NDP have some concerns with this bill.

It would provide a new due diligence defence that could significantly insulate companies from taking responsibility for any risk. This could diminish the Canadian public's confidence in our food supply and undermine the European Union's confidence in our exports. The United Kingdom recently rejected similar legislation for this reason.

It would do nothing to protect workers in meat processing plants with regard to whistle-blowing protection.

It also would include provisions that may inadvertently disallow certain products for Canadian export. The proposal to incorporate by reference standards could permit conflicts of interest to influence policy making and could abdicate government oversight entirely in some cases. There is no clause to address possible material conflicts of interest.

It would also do nothing to address problems with fraudulent nutrition information, despite the enormous health and financial toll of nutrition-related illness. The CFIA considers irregularities in nutrition labelling to be lower priority quality issues, not health and safety issues. According to the fines information published on CFIA's website for the period of January 2010 to September 2012, not a single fine was levied for inaccurate nutritional information on food labels, despite the fact that at least two of CFIA's own product sampling surveys demonstrated significant widespread inaccuracies in nutrition information provided in pre-packaged foods and restaurant websites and brochures.

By streamlining inspectors' powers for all types of food, there is concern that inspectors will have insufficient knowledge and/or experience to undertake this task. There are very different products with very different hazards associated with them.

The bill would create an internal review mechanism that regulated parties could use to seek review of certain inspection decisions or deal with complaints, rather than the current judicial review process. This should be monitored for transparency with resources given to public interest interveners.

Finally, the bill would give the minister power to grant, suspend and revoke non-transferable licences or registration for persons and establishments as well as any conditions that the minister might choose to prescribe. This represents more centralized power in the hands of the minister.

Let me talk about cuts to the CFIA budget in 2012. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency report on plans and priorities signed and tabled by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food himself on May 8, says, “Planned Spending is declining by approximately $46.6 million and 314 FTE's from 2012-13 to 2014-15--REF-CFIA Report on Plans and Priorities”. This comes from section 1.51 the financial resources and human resources CFIA report on plans and priorities.

The Conservatives like to say that they have invested $100 million additional funds to the CFIA. That claim is false. The $100 million is projected over five years and only $18 million have actually been allocated this year. In budget 2012 the next three-year outlook for food safety indicates a projected cut of $56.1 million.

Let me turn to auditing the CFIA compliance verification system, CVS. New Democrats believe that the CFIA processes such as the central verification system, need to be audited immediately. Bill S-11 was amended in the Senate so that a CFIA audit was required within five years of its coming into force, but this is not enough. Given repeated failures in the food safety system, we cannot wait five years. This is why we put forward an amendment at committee stage that would require an immediate audit in order to get baseline information to be applied in future reviews. Unfortunately, the Conservative members of the committee voted against it.

In January 2009, Sheila Weatherill was appointed by the Prime Minister to investigate what led to the listeriosis outbreak that left 22 people dead during the summer of 2008 and recommended how to avoid a similar tragedy. The compliance verification system was a new pilot inspection program adopted by the CFIA in 2005. Weatherill found that the CVS was flawed and was in need of “critical improvements related to its design, planning, and implementation”. She also found the CVS was “implemented without a detailed assessment of the resources available to take on these new tasks”.

In the aftermath of the 2008 disaster, it was discovered that Maple Leaf was under no obligation to report to the CFIA test results showing contamination in the plant. In a system which increasingly relies on companies to police themselves, this shortcoming was not addressed.

XL Foods, one of the biggest meat processors in the country, had also ignored this requirement to notify CFIA of test results. The CFIA does not have the resources in place to fully understand what was going on in that plant.

Important pieces of the Weatherill report were never fully adopted by the government, including a substantive internal audit that addressed CVS, the pilot reporting system being used for food inspectors during the Walkerton crisis that continues to be used today. A financial audit of the CFIA was completed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, but it did not address the systems and the processes recommended by the Weatherill report.

There is much more I could say about the resources to the CFIA, on penalties that one would say are adequate but not enforced, and on further resources. However, let me summarize what we are looking for.

New Democrats have a serious number of concerns with the bill, however, we support the bill moving to third reading. We know the Conservatives need to accept responsibility for gutting food safety resources. They have been proponents of increased self-regulation. Inspectors look at paperwork, not at meat. This is a direct result of fewer resources provided to CFIA, and we are seeing those consequences now.

There should be no super events that catch us unaware. Given the increased complexity and centralization of the food system and greater volumes handled by any single facility, resources for food inspection should be increased to ensure the safety of Canadians.

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5:20 p.m.

NDP

Hélène LeBlanc NDP LaSalle—Émard, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his speech.

This government has implemented austerity budgets, and we are seeing the disastrous consequences, especially in agriculture, which we are debating now. There have also been cuts to Fisheries and Oceans and other public service sectors from scientific research to Service Canada. All of this has a significant effect on Canadians' quality of life.

I would like my colleague to expand on this issue and explain how Canadians are paying the price for the austerity budgets.