Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on May 25th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'll call the meeting to order. We have a quorum here.

We welcome our witness, Mr. Bob Kingston.

Mr. Easter.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I'm surprised that there's only Bob Kingston on the witness list. I wrote you a letter on May 22. The first witness list that came out had Mr. Kingston and a couple of others on it. Now we only see Mr. Kingston on it. I believe he wanted a couple of other people to accompany him. When we invited Mr. McCain...I think one of the representatives of an organization should be able to take whoever they want to accompany them with them. So if Mr. Kingston has people here to accompany him today who could, I think, provide us with the best evidence possible for this committee to do its work, then that's what should happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Okay, Mr. Easter, I just delivered a response. That letter came to my office some time on Friday and I was out doing events, and rather than send it over this morning, it's there.

Mr. Easter, as far as the witness here is concerned, the clerk and I have been instructed by the committee as a whole. You specifically had a motion on here to have Mr. Kingston appear at a time between 4 p.m and 6 p.m. That has been done. You also had a notice of motion that he appear by himself, and that's what we have done. That's a matter of record. So we've done that, and nobody, no member of the committee, put forth Mr. Sicard's name at all. The letter that I just sent out in explanation covers that.

You may change your mind, Mr. Easter, from time to time and I guess you have that prerogative, but we went on instructions from the committee and so here's Mr. Kingston today between the times that you asked for and by himself.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Chair, when we invite the head of a union before the committee, then he should be able to have accompany him anyone he decides on.

As for the motion I mentioned--which ended up not being debated--that said by himself, what it meant was this. Originally the list came out and you had about six other panellists on with him, and I did not want to see one of the key witness groups before us diluted by some five or six other groups. The Agriculture Union is one of the key pieces of evidence that we can go to in terms of whether there has been a system failure here, or whatever. I believe Mr. Kingston has the other people in the room with him. If he requests that they be asked to appear before the committee as part of his delegation, then that's what ought to be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

As I said in my explanation, verbally, and in the letter that you have, Mr. Kingston is here as per the committee's request, and anyway, that's the end of the story.

Mr. Allen and then Mr. Bellavance.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm not disputing the fact that you're interpreting this in the sense that the witness was named and perhaps it was just the one witness. But I'd like to point out that we've had delegations before us that were actually delegations from a particular group--whether it be chicken producers or whether it be some others--who brought numerous people with them who weren't identified on the list as witnesses per se; they simply came as part of that delegation. Mr. Kingston certainly represents a much larger group than himself personally. It seems to me that if we're trying to do things in a wholesome and fulsome way, one of the ways to do that is indeed to allow him additional folks, who are here, who are going to make representations, who can really speak to the entire system, and I think are of value to this committee.

They may not even be asked a question in some cases. We're not certain. I don't believe we're asking them to give testimony, because I believe Mr. Kingston has provided it in writing, and I'm sure he's going to present it as he has it here, but they may indeed have specific information that may arise from a specific question, or may not. But it seems to me not to allow that to happen sets a tone and sets a sense that somehow we don't wish to hear from them, and I don't think that's the case.

I think the case on all sides is that we're trying to flash the light on all of the circumstances surrounding this particular situation that happened last year so that Canadian consumers who buy food can feel that the system is safe. I think doing that and allowing those folks to come forward, whether indeed they're questioned or not, at least allows the opportunity for all sides to engage in that conversation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thanks, Mr. Allen.

Of course we all know that this food safety subcommittee was established to address exactly food safety issues in Canada. That's what we need to do.

On your point about the witnesses, when specific groups or organizations are requested by any committee member, there's never a specific request for an individual from that group unless stated by the committee. Mr. Kingston was specifically requested to be here. Another example that comes to mind is Maple Leaf Foods. Mr. McCain, among others, was requested specifically to come from Maple Leaf Foods, as an example.

Unless that direction was given to the clerk or me, which it wasn't, we acted according to how we would normally act on that.

Mr. Bellavance.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Before both the subcommittee and the Agriculture Committee, repeatedly, witnesses have been accompanied by people belonging to their organization. There's even the ultimate example of ministers who arrive here in the company of an army of public servants who sit behind them and who, at some point, are asked to come and sit at the table. Nothing has ever been said against this practice. I don't understand why suddenly we're trying to control the attendance of witnesses to this extent.

Speaking of control, there's also another problem: the government seems to want to control the operation of this subcommittee. I've just about had enough of endlessly repeating that we asked that... Fine, I've just seen the cameras and I'll stop now. It was not indicated that the meeting would be televised, but I've just noticed that it is. That's good news, but our sessions haven't always been televised.

Mr. Chair, you are not setting a good example by circulating a letter that you wrote to Mr. Easter written in English only. All documents distributed here should be in both official languages. You're the chair of this subcommittee and right now I have before me a letter from you written solely in English.

In my opinion, things are not going so well and I'll have some other comments to make to the Agriculture Committee, which is merrily slipping out of control. I don't understand why people are making such a fuss because Mr. Kingston wanted to be accompanied by a member from his organization. It's beyond me and I denounce it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Mr. Bellavance, I apologize that my letter today is in English, but at the same time, we just got it. It came to my office via e-mail on Friday and got to our office today. We did not have time to translate it, but I thought it important enough to at least have the....

I'm sorry?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Time is no excuse. The rules are clear: documents have to be in both official languages. It's up to you, Mr. Chair. It's worse than if it were somebody else. It's unacceptable!

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'll take that point, Mr. Bellavance, but at the same time, I thought it was a very important issue. I could have held on to it until Wednesday. We'll do our best to get you a translated copy, but there are things in that letter that spell out Mr. Easter's concerns in his letter, and I thought it was important that every member of the committee had it today.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

If it's so important, why, as a francophone and Quebec member of the committee, didn't I get the letter in French at the same time as my colleagues? This is a lack of respect, Mr. Chair. Don't try to excuse yourself by saying it doesn't matter. It does matter and it's not right. You made a mistake, and this letter should not be distributed. The clerk should even take this letter away from us because it is not in both official languages. I don't want to take up the time of the witness and the subcommittee, but don't try to give me the reasons why it was filed, I won't accept them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

That's fine. I can't force you to accept it. That was the reality of it, Mr. Bellavance.

As far as respect is concerned, I have the utmost respect for you as a member. It was meant in no disrespect, and I'm sorry that you don't take it that way.

Mr. Anderson.

[David Anderson, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC]

We'd like to go ahead and hear our witnesses' testimonies.

As Mr. Bellavance said, the opposition is getting frustrated because it's not going well for them. They've tried to find a number of things here and haven't been able to. They've tried to discredit the independent investigator. They've tried to discredit the minister and have been unsuccessful, because the testimony has indicated that these folks are doing their job and have done a good job.

I think we should move ahead. I don't understand Mr. Easter coming here today and disrupting this, because he specifically wanted Mr. Kingston by himself, and he said that. The other gentleman who has been proposed was not presented as a witness. So I ask that we hear the testimony and move ahead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Mr. Allen, briefly.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On a totally different subject, which is not on the agenda, I do have some business arising. If we could, I'd like to see us get an opportunity to look at it at the end of the witnesses here and not adjourn before we get an opportunity to do that. There are a few things we haven't cleaned up, and I'd like to see that happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

With the committee's indulgence, in the last session of today's meeting, we'll save a little time at the end of the meeting.

How much time were you suggesting, Mr. Allen. Fifteen minutes?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

With everyone's indulgence, I think 15 minutes would be more than adequate. It might only take five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

That's okay. Fair enough.

Mr. Kingston, for 10 minutes or less, please.

[Bob Kingston, National President, Inspection Supervisor, Canadian Food Inspection Agency (Burnaby, B.C.), Agriculture Union]

My name is Bob Kingston, and I am the president of the Agriculture Union, a part of PSAC that represents most of the employees within the agriculture portfolio.

Contrary to the comments made by the minister earlier, I was in fact an inspector. I was an inspector for 25 years, 15 of those as an inspection supervisor. I am a lead auditor, and I am so certified.

There is a presentation deck, which I believe everybody has. There are references in the deck to the tabs. There were a couple of newspaper articles in the tabs that, unfortunately, didn't get translated, so we're not entering them as official information, but the booklet of reference material is available. Most of this material already exists in documentation that has been presented to this committee.

We want to talk about and focus on the processed meat inspection part of food safety, because it was the part involved in the crisis that happened last summer. I think it's been analyzed enough since then, just before and after the crisis, that we can perhaps draw some conclusions about resource levels at CFIA, which is our principal intention here.

The third page of the deck is just about the history of processed meat inspection and its evolution. As I said, there's a lot of supporting documentation already, so I don't think we have to go into it in any big way.

I do want to mention, however, that on the fourth page we talk about prevention versus recall and investigation. I heard a lot of witnesses comment that the only sound way to approach the monitoring of food safety in this country is through bacterial or microbial testing, because that's the only scientifically based approach to food regulation. We take great exception to that for a couple of reasons. One, it's closing the gate after the horse is already out of the barn. Also, the value of having on-site inspection cannot be overstated in terms of its importance.

Having inspectors who are present on-site in these plants does several things. First of all, it affects the behaviour of the plant employees in a very positive way. It usually means that things are followed a lot more strictly and precisely. It's like driving down the freeway with a cop in your rear-view mirror. You're a lot more likely to obey the speed limit. It's also a fact that when our inspectors are on the plant floors, plant employees like to talk. If there are things going on in the plant that they're not happy about, they tell the inspector—but only if the inspector is available. If the inspector is sitting up in an office somewhere doing paperwork, this isn't going to happen. So the kind of information they get from plant employees has proven to be invaluable over the years.

The other thing that experienced inspectors provide is that they can recognize the symptoms that lead to listeria becoming a problem in a plant—not just listeria, but other microbial contamination as well. The inspectors on-site can see things like excessive condensation and moisture. They can tell when the humidity is too high, just through experience. They can see things like worn or cracked rubber belts, etc., which are very hard to sterilize. So then if they're reading a report that says that sanitation was perfect but they know they have problems with the actual equipment in the room, they are in a position to go and have a second look and question what they're seeing. They're also in a position to witness the practices of the plant employees, be they for sanitation or otherwise. We think that's pretty important as well.

On the next page, we talk about CFIA being under-resourced. There are a couple of things I'd like to point out. We've done a bit of an analysis of the time it takes to carry out compliance verification system tasks, and to do those properly. If you do all that's required in the system, we have shown that it takes about 800 hours to do a ready-to-eat facility—if you're going to do it properly. You don't have to be a mathematician to figure out that if a person has two ready-to-eat facilities on their list of things to do, that's it; the inspector should not be assigned another half dozen work sites to look after. In fact, they shouldn't be assigned any other work to look after, if you want it carried out properly.

I know there has been a lot of positive feedback from the minister's office and from CFIA about how these resource pressures aren't really that serious, and that things seem to be going fine. But there was a briefing between the president of CFIA and the minister back in January where it was made clear to the minister there were problems getting the job done. There were problems meeting the requirements under the program, and there were resource pressures. So this has been made clear. And for those who are interested, it's under tab 3 in the unofficial tabs.

There was a lot of talk, right from last summer until now, about additional inspectors being hired. You've heard anywhere from 175 to 200 to 258. It seemed to depend on who you spoke to and on which day. The additional inspectors hired at CFIA were simply the total number of increase in a category of classification, EGs, which is basically engineering and scientific support. That includes everybody from those who do microbial testing in a laboratory to those doing germination testing on seeds. They could also be out doing surveys for things like potato cyst nematode--which, in fact, a large number of them were. Just prior to this, approval was given by Treasury Board to hire 200 new inspectors under something called the invasive alien species program. In fact, the Auditor General wrote extensively about that in her last report.

So the idea that 175 or 200 or 258 new inspectors were hired to do front-line work in meat hygiene was, quite frankly, a falsehood. It should never have been said. In fact, they are still under-resourced in CFIA to do food inspection. According to an agreement that we reached with them on essential services, which went category by category and identified numbers of inspectors, there were only about 1,200 working-level food inspectors at CFIA. And by that I mean there were about 200 trainees and there were about another 100 supervisors, but if you take those away, you have about 1,200 working-level food inspectors. And fewer than 200 of those in the country are processed meat inspectors.

As a consequence of having so few resources to do such a big task, CFIA is often left with not being able to follow up on enforcement actions and with corrective action requests that are issued by the inspectors. Required audits--or at least required as per the system design--are often not completed and historically have not been completed.

Also as a consequence of a lack of resources, there isn't time to train the inspectors. It's very difficult to free up a lot of inspectors working in the meat hygiene program for training. So many inspectors have not received appropriate compliance verification system training or training specific to auditing, which is what they're being asked to do under this new system. We think that's a significant problem.

The two people I was going to have join me couldn't be here. They could have given first-hand knowledge about some of the things that happened leading up to the Bartor Road Maple Leaf situation.

But what I can tell you--albeit it's second-hand information--is that leading up to that situation, annual audits were not completed. The quarterly audits that were done prior to CVS were stopped in 2007. And we've put down here that there was an overtime ban. Now, that's a bit of a misnomer in the sense that there was a perceived overtime ban among many of the inspection staff. The consistent feedback we got from the inspectors was--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

You have one minute.

[Bob Kingston]

--simply that it wasn't being authorized. My understanding is that in some cases it may have been based on communication, but the net result was that those critical inspections weren't being done.

So we're talking about visual pre-operation, visual sanitation checks, and the audits at Maple Leaf Bartor Road not being done leading up to the situation. And they were not done purely for resource reasons.

In terms of the time spent there by the inspector.... Pardon me?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I was just clearing my throat.

[Bob Kingston]

Basically, if I'm running out of time, I want to get to the recommendations. That's on the very last tab. If I have time, I'll come back and cover a couple more bases.

We want to ensure that processed meat inspectors are responsible for no more than two ready-to-eat facilities apiece. We want to make sure that CFIA adequately trains inspectors in both CVS and auditing. And we want to have a joint CFIA/union evaluation of the compliance verification system and the resources required to fully implement it as designed. We think if it's not fully implemented.... If you have an audit system that doesn't have all of its component pieces in place, you don't have an audit system with integrity. It's as simple as that.

On the transparency issue, we want CFIA's obligation to communicate openly with Canadians in times of crisis enshrined in some way, shape, or form. What happened last summer, when they were told by the minister's office that they couldn't speak anymore, including to us, was unforgiveable, in our view. We want to end the practice of making food safety policy behind closed doors. And we want to restore publication of meat establishment audit reports.

And since I haven't been cut off yet, I'll come back to a couple of--

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Well, you are over time. If there is a point you haven't already got in, Mr. Kingston, you can certainly add it in the questioning.