Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, I am compelled to raise the matter of the public inquiry and the government's mishandling of the listeriosis crisis once again. It might have helped if the parliamentary secretary had answered my questions the last time we had an adjournment debate rather than reading a prepared statement without substance. However, it is not unusual for the government to read a prepared statement out of the PMO.
The government has consistently and desperately avoided the one means by which to fully clarify and adequately resolve the crisis of confidence that has surrounded the government since the outbreak of the listeriosis crisis that claimed 22 lives last year. It refuses to hold a full public inquiry.
The minister has made a great deal about the Weatherill investigation, an investigation for which there are no transcripts. We cannot see the evidence. It is not available to us. We do not even know who she met with. We do not even know what questions she raised. The report, according to the terms of reference of the investigator, was to be made available for editing or revising by those who were interviewed.
We do not know if that happened but we do know, according to the terms of reference, that the investigator who was supposedly doing the inquiry was to pass over the document before it was released to the people she was supposed to be investigating and then ask them if they wanted to edit it before it went to the minister who would then decide if it would be made public. It has been made public but we do not know what revisions were made.
After this report was released to the public, it failed the test of even one of the government's own advisers to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The University of Manitoba's food microbiologist, Rick Holley, a member of the academic advisory panel on food safety at the inspection agency, said that the “lack of knowledge about food-borne illness--how it happens and its cost to society in terms of death and illness--is a weak spot in the Canadian food safety system that none of the recommendations addressed adequately”.
And worse, he went on to say, “if all 57 recommendations are implemented--will ignore this very, very large issue of food-borne illness surveillance”
That was in the Toronto Star on September 12 of this year.
Professor Holley went even further when he was asked: Are we better off today than in the summer of 2008 with respect to food safety? He said, “Oh, hell no”.
If scientists, who have had a role in advising CFIA, have so little confidence in the government's efforts to improve the food safety system, then why should Canadians? Canadians deserve some answers.
As a member of the standing committee, the problem I have with the report concerns the discrepancies between her report and what she gave as evidence in her report and what we were told at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. That is a very serious matter but the parliamentary secretary and his group prevented her from coming before the committee. We need answers.