Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of you for coming. We appreciate your comments.
I'm struggling with the lack of coordination regarding the investigation. CFIA, Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency have all been involved in pandemic planning, for example. The basics are the same: Who takes the lead? What is the reporting structure? What is the cycle of communication? I feel we've made the same mistakes regarding listeriosis as some that were made regarding SARS.
We've just had Maple Leaf here, and they discussed shared responsibility from both the company and the government authority. When we talked about SARS, it was shared understanding, shared responsibility, and shared lessons learned. I appreciate you've been very detailed in how you will go forward. You mentioned you took a hard look at yourselves and you took immediate action. I don't hear the word “responsibility”.
My question is going to be around who was to take leadership. Where was government oversight for this? I'll give some examples. You will have to bear with us because the dates are different in different reports.
CFIA informed the public health division and PHAC on August 13 that Maple Leaf was the manufacturer. Why was it two days later when the Halton Region Health Department issued an advisory to local homes about a possible link? Why didn't CFIA post a warning on its website? On the 13th, why was there no discussion among partners or communication to the public? Why didn't CFIA post a warning on its website until four days later, on the 17th? What other methods did it take to inform the public? Why did CFIA wait until the 19th to issue a health hazard alert, advising the public not to eat 23 ready-to-eat deli meats packaged at Maple Leaf?
I know this is not CFIA, but it's again government oversight. Why did the Chief Medical Officer of Health wait until the 20th to issue a public news release? Why did the Chief Medical Officer of Health wait until the 21st to notify the LHINs to ensure products on the CFIA list were thrown out? The Chief Medical Officer of Health ordered the preparation of clinical practice guidelines for front-line physicians at a still later date. These are real concerns. This is government oversight.
I'm going to add one more to that. This is a comment in the Ontario report. Because the local and provincial public health units were not directly involved in inspecting the plant, it was difficult for them to obtain information about its production processes and the extent to which contaminated products had been distributed across the province. Why was it difficult? Who made it difficult? How could these challenges have been circumvented?
My questions are really around government oversight.