Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here.
As we talk about who takes the lead, who takes the role of being the public face, what Mr. McCain said the other evening was—and it's in his report that he presented to us—that he was the public face of listeriosis during the outbreak. He has a reason to be the public face as far as Maple Leaf is concerned, but in my humble opinion, not when it comes to the Canadian public as a whole, when it comes to responsibility for food safety. He certainly has a responsibility for Maple Leaf products, which ultimately were indeed the source of the outbreak, as we've now all identified. He has quite openly said it was true.
But as we started to work through this process, through this timeline that you talk about, Dr. Butler-Jones, there were a number of things, and a number of recalls started to happen from different areas. We've got places like Shopsy's Reuben sandwiches and Mr. Sub, so it goes beyond, in the sense of...albeit those food substances did come from the Maple Leaf product and that particular Bartor Road facility.
The question is this. When did it enter the mind of the Public Health Agency that perhaps this had gone across the border, if you will, from province to province? There is evidence of when it might be pointed out or not. When did you think PHAC really needed to be the front face of this?
I'll be honest with you, as you articulated earlier about your communication process of webcasting, that doesn't get to Canadians in a good way. It gets to certain segments of the population, for certain—probably teenagers more than anybody else. It certainly wouldn't get to somebody like my mother. You're open to the media, and I appreciate the fact that you were open to it, but I would suggest what you needed to do was actually be proactive and be in the media's face so that you became the public face, or someone who was the designate. I use you, sir, as the point person. It doesn't necessarily have to be your face, as you said earlier. It doesn't necessarily have to be yours.
I'm mindful of what the late Dr. Sheela Basrur did in Toronto when the SARS situation happened. Clearly, in the province of Ontario where I come from, she became its face. She became the point where everyone said, “When Dr. Basrur speaks about this particular incident, we're listening.” In this particular case when Michael McCain speaks, we're hearing somebody who's the producer of this particular source, and the first question that gets asked by a lot of Canadians is, “Hmm, is he the person we really should listen to? He's being honest. He's being as fair as he possibly can. But ultimately, does he speak on behalf of the food safety system or does he speak on behalf of Maple Leaf?” That's a dichotomy nobody can really answer in their own mind without looking at it.
I asked a simple question. I think it's simple enough. When did you know? When did you think your organization or Health Canada should have been front and centre of this particular outbreak?