Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm Professor Amir Attaran of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. I'm also on the editorial team of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, and I'm trusting that our editorial of last year on the listeriosis problem has now been circulated to everyone on the committee. That editorial was written by me and six other members, indeed the full editorial team of the journal. We are Canada's leading medical journal.
In our joint assessment--not mine alone--listeriosis, as the title of the article goes, is the least of it. It is emblematic of broader problems, very well-understood and deeply neglected problems that each day threaten to kill Canadians. Let me be as blunt as that. Parliament, through inaction, is currently endangering Canadian lives through insufficient regulation but also insufficient structures for public health promotion, as Dr. Wilson has just outlined.
In the case of the listeriosis problem in particular, the seeds lay first and foremost in poor regulation. We researched Canada's standards for Listeria monocytogenes bacteria in ready-to-eat food and have compared Canada's standard to that of 30 countries, including the United States, Brazil--a developing country--and those in Europe. We found that of the 30 countries we looked at, Canada had the weakest, lowest standards. Of 30 countries, Canada is in 30th place. If today we were in 29th place, I could report progress to you. We are not. We are in last place. We allow 100 live bacteria per gram of ready-to-eat food; that's legal. The United States allows zero. All of the European Union allows less. Even Brazil allows less.
The seeds of this disaster also lay in poor cooperation, as Dr. Wilson has outlined, between the federal agencies responsible and the provinces. He is quite correct that the Auditor General has three times in about the last decade pointed to this communication breakdown between the federal and provincial governments as extremely alarming. It is. It would potentially be the cause of massive death in this country if a pandemic of a more serious nature took hold.
In the listeriosis epidemic, Ontario bore the brunt. That's interesting, because Ontario is the only province to have signed an information-sharing agreement with the federal government. The other nine provinces have not signed such an agreement, despite a decade of effort. So Ontario is the high-water mark of our ten provinces in terms of cooperation, and yet it was in Ontario that the disaster of listeriosis struck the hardest. If this is our high-water mark, I am terrified, as a Canadian knowledgeable about public health, to think what the low-water mark looks like.
We do not know if political interference caused so little information to be shared with Ontario, including information about the source of infected meats and where those meats had been distributed. Had that information been shared and acted on, the Ontario chief public health officer has said, it could have saved lives. I agree--it could have--but it wasn't shared.
The question often arises as to whether there is constitutional authority to do more federally in health regulation and health promotion. I will now speak briefly as a lawyer. The answer is, emphatically, yes. There's nothing in the Constitution Act, sections 91 or 92, that compels us, as Dr. Wilson has said, to be the slow kid in the class among federal nations in having the least effective cooperation between the federal and provincial levels of government in times of health emergency. That is not an imperative in the Constitution.
I'll give you an example. When recently pigs in Alberta on a particular farm acquired the H1N1 influenza virus, the federal government took principal authority over that outbreak. In 2006, when geese on a farm in Prince Edward Island were found to have bird flu, it was the federal government that quarantined the farm. The federal government today has a greater role in health protection and promotion for Canadian pigs and Canadian geese than Canadian people, and that's a travesty. In times of crisis, we really could all find our lives at risk because of unutilized federal jurisdiction. It must be utilized; it must be. During questions, I'll be happy to tell you where that residual authority in the Constitution could and should be utilized.
I paid close attention to Parliament's exercise over the last few weeks. You're all to be commended for trying to better understand what happened in the listeriosis crisis, but I do believe this has been a largely futile exercise, because you've not been able to have before you some key witnesses, or to compel evidence or persons to appear. That is why this matter needs an inquiry under the Inquiries Act. It's absolutely essential to maintain public confidence and public safety. The investigation, as it's called, that is now under way that was requested by the Prime Minister also lacks those powers to compel evidence and persons, and therefore is inadequate.
In an inquiry struck under the Inquiries Act, which is what we advocated in the Canadian Medical Association Journal--not myself but the entire editorial team--there will be several questions. I would simply outline three of them. First, why are Canada's standards for Listeria monocytogenes bacteria in food so incredibly low, the worst of 30 countries we looked at? Second, why was information not shared in an efficient, complete, and timely manner with the provinces? Third, what transpired politically, and did it amount to interference to the jeopardy of Canadians' lives? The third is the most important question.
From those three questions within the inquiry, I believe a picture can be sketched that would be protective of all Canadians' lives, going ahead. This should not be about partisan politics; it should be about saving people from known threats.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.