When you sit on this subcommittee, you hear all kinds of things that make no sense.
I'm going to tell you about something that occurred and you will tell me if you have ever experienced a similar situation. On April 20, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada, and the Deputy Minister of Health Canada wrote to Dr. Williams, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health.
I mentioned this to Mr. Butler-Jones, who heads the Public Health Agency of Canada. He did not clearly remember whether he wrote such comments.
The blame was laid squarely on Ontario, not necessarily for what happened, but for the delay in confirming the contamination source. Ontario was being blamed for that, because the Toronto Public Health Office had sent samples to the wrong laboratory for analysis. The samples should have been sent to the Agency's regional laboratory in Scarborough, but instead were sent to the Listeriosis Reference Service at the Health Canada laboratory in Ottawa. Thus when others were asked questions, we were told that the Agency's laboratory in Scarborough was not certified at the time the Listeriosis crisis occurred. So there are contradictions there.
I'm wondering if that isn't the way the Agency goes about things—trying to offload any potential problems onto the provinces.
Have you ever been in a position where you were told that, in fact, it was you who had done the wrong thing? Given what I have just told you, is there a specific procedure that the province is required to follow in the event of a crisis like this, or is the procedure somewhat random?