Evidence of meeting #9 for Subcommittee on Food Safety in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was inspectors.
A recording is available from Parliament.
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raymonde Folco Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
You don't wish to answer either. All right.
Let me go to another quote. This time it's from The Globe and Mail of Friday, August 29, 2008. Bill Curry, who wrote the article, begins by saying, “The Canadian government strongly opposed tougher U.S. rules to prevent listeria and lobbied the United States to accept Canada's more lenient standards, internal documents reveal.”
Would you say this characterizes correctly the direction of the Canadian government?
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Raymonde Folco Liberal Laval—Les Îles, QC
Thank you.
That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll give my colleague the other half of my time.
8:05 p.m.
Conservative
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Thank you.
Earlier, under questioning by both Mr. Allen and Mr. Bellavance, different management was talked about. My question relates to Mr. Caron and Mr. Vessey. You are basically saying that people are doing work for which they're perhaps not well trained, and they're doing work in different areas.
In terms of your experience with the CFIA, you both had to come up through the system. I would actually call it the Ottawa culture, and I'm very serious about this. Even at the departmental level, what you find now is that we have professional managers who don't have a damned clue about what they're supposed to be managing. They've never worked in the industry, and I think that's a huge problem. Whether it's with Agriculture Canada, Fisheries, or CFIA, a lot of people at the top have never worked on the line in a slaughter plant, walked the farm, rogued the potatoes, and done those kinds of things so that they understand the very system that they're managing.
My question is this: in your experience with CFIA over the years, and previously with Agriculture Canada, have you seen more managers enter the system? I ask because we seem to be managed to death, but we don't have people doing the work on the ground. Have you seen changes in that area?
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Good. Can you tell me what they were, and maybe expand a little bit?
8:05 p.m.
As an Individual
I probably don't have to tell you who they are. I think you could probably ask for numbers yourself and find out what the change in the number of employees has been since the agency was formed. We often talk about this process of the inverted pyramid, in which you get two inspectors and you get 800 people above that inspector in support.
8:05 p.m.
Liberal
Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE
Mr. Chairman, I really do think it's not just on this investigation. We all know what it's like trying to deal with Agriculture Canada, and it's the same problem.
Let me put the question to you this way: in an agency like the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, how important is it...? We have a memo from last summer when there was the new verification of listeriosis and listeria monocytogenes in processing and ready-to-eat establishments. The memo that went out on February 20 said that immediate sampling would have to take place. Then, shortly afterward, another memo went out saying that they were requested not to proceed with the collection of this environmental sampling. We know the reason now; it was because they had to go for training.
What that tells me is that even some of the supervisors who are supervising the inspectors do not know the system because they haven't worked in it. My question is this: how important is it that senior management in our food inspection systems come up through the system and be trained in the very areas of expertise that they're supposed to be managing, and how important is it to have somewhat the same experience down through the line in terms of supervisors?
8:10 p.m.
As an Individual
I think it's very important. They are to be mentors. They are to be providing advice and helping you in difficult situations. If they don't have any knowledge of the system, it's very difficult for them to give you advice that you would be able to use.
8:10 p.m.
As an Individual
I think it's relatively important too. It may not be the key, and that's what concerns me. If you've already heard from people that there's not enough time to do it, when could people possibly get training if there's no time to do their work? And looking at it from the other point of view, if they don't have time to do these CVS activities, when are they going to go to train? If they go to train, they're doing less of the activity. So it's a catch-22, I think, from that point of view. I don't think it's absolutely necessary. I think that good supervisory skills would probably give you the same thing.
I can actually give you an example of that. In the meat inspection world at one time, the meat inspection people started doing the grading. They used to be separate, and they combined the two sections. I happened to be a supervisor at that time. Now, it depended on the approach you used, as the supervisor, how you used the expertise of that person who was a grader, because I didn't have the expertise to grade. However, following good supervisory practices, if there was an issue, you were able to ask that person, “Why did you make this decision? What's your explanation?” And if you had to go to somebody else to find out why they made that decision and whether it was a good decision, there were grading program people who could give you that answer.
So it wasn't totally necessary, but you certainly had to use good supervisory skills to get there. And if you were always busy or overworked, it was very difficult to do those things.
8:10 p.m.
Conservative
May 25th, 2009 / 8:10 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you both for being here tonight.
Mr. Caron, you talked about meat import. If the meat's coming in from the United States, is it all partially or fully inspected when it comes into the country?
8:10 p.m.
As an Individual
It's supposed to be fully inspected. It's supposed to be certified.
8:10 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Okay. And so we treat the United States differently because of NAFTA. Is that right? We have an agreement with them that our systems are pretty much equivalent, and both countries accept that?
8:10 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Okay.
Now, I'm just wondering, the problem, in your opinion, with our giving them advance notice is what--that some of the other shipments are not properly processed? Or is it with the shipments that we've said we're going to inspect?
8:10 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, I've inspected a lot of loads that were certified, and there were a lot of problems with them. I have had loads off condition. That could have been in transit. That could have happened at the plant level. I have had shipments of meat that had pathological lesions on them. I have had loads of meat that were in trucks that were filthy, dirty, had foul odours to them, and yet had a USDA seal on them.
8:10 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
What's your suggestion--that every truckload coming across the border be inspected individually?
8:10 p.m.
Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC
Is that what you're suggesting? Is that your solution?
8:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I think there are a lot of areas you have to look at with meat. Meat is a very highly perishable, high-risk product. These loads are travelling sometimes thousands of miles, and a lot of things can go wrong. The meat could even be substituted. These truckers could stop anywhere and substitute that product.
