Debates of Oct. 1st, 2012

National Defence

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it begs this question. Why would the Conservatives carry on an entire election on one set of costs and now, after the election, they have decided to incorporate a secretariat, which is to go around and find out what the costs are? Either they knew the costs before or they knew the costs after. My guess is they knew the costs before, but they did not tell us. Now they are trying to discredit the AG., so the KPMG folks have been hired to essentially discredit the Auditor General's report on full life cycle costs to the tune of $600,000.

What is interesting in this entire exercise, and I asked this question today, is why the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women is acting minister of defence for the purposes of procurement.

Apparently the Minister of National Defence and, indeed, his associate minister are not capable of actually asking the relevant questions that are necessary to be asked in order to establish the costs. One would think, at this stage, six years after the fact, we could have actually arrived at the costs.

This plane has a minimum payload and a maximum payroll and the consequence is the taxpayer is getting hosed.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on June 13, the government announced the establishment of the National Fighter Procurement Secretariat within public works as the lead to coordinate work going forward to replace Canada's CF-18 fleet. The secretariat is responsible for the review, oversight, coordination and implementation of the action plan.

The government also released NFPS's terms of reference on June 13, which establishes improved governance and coordination structure, strengthens due diligences and commits departments to transparency.

As work progresses on implementing the action plan, the secretariat will work to ensure that Canadians are provided with accurate and timely information throughout the process.

Aboriginal Affairs

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to follow up on a question I asked back in May about the UN special rapporteur on the right to food.

It is a bit ironic that I am doing this on October 1, because this is the date that the changes in the nutrition north program and food subsidy list take place. As of today, a number of goods will be dropped from the subsidy list, including a number of canned goods, pasta, rice, coffee, tea, diapers and so on.

Why would we continue to raise this matter? Certainly the costs of some fresh and perishable goods have gone down, but I think the reality is that when we look at issues facing many people who live in the north, we see they are facing poverty and unemployment.

In the Inuit health survey from 2007-08, I want to read a couple of statistics because it highlights the fact that poverty is a very real issue for people who are trying to buy nutritious food.

In the north 78% of homes had children, and of those homes 40% were crowded, whereas only 3% of non-aboriginal people lived in crowded housing.

They say food insecurity is a problem in homes in Nunavut communities. Fewer than one third of the households reported that they had enough food to eat, and 35% of households reported severe food insecurity—71.4% of households with children were food insecure. Unemployment, low income and high food costs were the main reasons for food insecurity.

More than 75% of the households shared their country food with others in their community, and that is an important matter because we know the subsidies for country food are important and yet there is very little uptake on them.

They go on to say in the survey that Nunavut households spend more on food and shelter than any other Canadian household. The average household in Nunavut spent $1,875 per month on food. For households with children, the monthly food bill was $1,992.

This compares to the average Canadian household, outside of the north, where they only spent $609 per month. So we can see that for some households it is more than three times the cost in the north that it is for other Canadian households.

People in the north are not sitting on their hands just waiting for the government to work with them, to help make food affordable. There is a Facebook page called Feeding My Family. There are thousands of people who are on this. Today in a story, Becky said that:

[W]e need to encourage our local stores to develop policies for how they handle outdated, rotting and expired foods...and at the same time, start educating ourselves on the purpose and limitations of best before dates.

That has been a bit of an issue up there, about what a best before date is.

This would be a good opportunity for the GN to get involved...through hosting informational sessions in cooperation with local stores. Community information-sharing like this doesn't even have to cost anything, it just takes a group of people willing to get together to learn from each other. That's where it starts.

A posting from September 18, and again it is an example of people taking charge of what is going on in the north, reads: Looking for volunteers, can you help?

Feeding My Family is looking for volunteers to write down prices of 26 grocery items that are normally found in grocery stores in the North. Our goal is to monitor the prices of dried goods and non-perishables that will no longer be subsidized by NNC after October 1, 2012 to see how much the price will increase if our stores must fly these products into our communities. We'd like to get prices from as many Northern communities as possible, specifically those participating in Nutrition North Canada.

There is a number of issues. First of all, there is the fact that people simply do not have enough money to buy the nutritious food they need, and then there is the fact that people are very concerned about what the changes in the system, the subsidies, will do as of October 1.

I guess my question is: How will the government work with northerners to make sure they do have access to affordable, quality food?

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to respond to the hon. member for Nanaimo—Cowichan's question.

The government is committed to supporting aboriginal people and northerners by providing them with improved access to healthy food. The Government of Canada has many programs in place that contribute to food accessibility and security for aboriginal people and northerners.

Nutrition North Canada is one of these programs. It is a retail subsidy program that improves access to perishable and healthy food in isolated northern communities without year-round surface transportation.

Since the program’s launch on April 1, 2011, Nutrition North Canada has provided retailers, suppliers and country food processors with subsidies for a variety of perishable foods including fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat, cheese and bread. Subsidies are also provided for country or traditional foods that are commercially processed in the north, such as arctic char, muskox and caribou.

With an Advisory Board made up of northerners to help guide the program, Nutrition North Canada currently benefits 103 remote northern communities in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Nutrition North Canada is helping bring healthy food to northern homes and providing northerners with healthy food choices. The program follows a new market-driven model that is an efficient, cost-effective and transparent means of helping northerners access nutritious perishable food.

After the first year of operation, prices have decreased and consumption of nutritious foods has increased in the north. These positive results were obtained with the same level of funding as the former program. Costs have decreased by 37% for certain products such as two-litre cartons of milk.

Finally, the Government of Canada is taking concrete action to improve the quality of life of aboriginal peoples and northern residents. It is working hard to ensure that aboriginal people and northerners have access to high-quality, nutritious food, like other Canadians. There is no question that through programs such as Nutrition North Canada, the government is proving that it remains wholly committed to improving the well-being of aboriginal peoples and northern residents in a concrete and measurable way.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary's response still does not deal with the fact that food prices for many people living in the north are more than three times what Canadians are paying in the south.

One of the things that statistics have shown is that country food shipped as of March 31, 2012, was such a small amount that it did not even register into percentage points. It was $559 in subsidies.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could speak to the fact that there are many people who simply cannot have the country food subsidized. They cannot afford to pay for some of these goods. Many people do not have a credit card or the cash available so they cannot arrange for shipments outside of what they can buy at the retailers.

I would like to hear the parliamentary secretary address what the government plans on doing on the large gap that exists for people who simply cannot afford to buy nutritious food, even at the subsidized rates.

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government recognizes that it is important for aboriginal people and northern residents to have access to healthy perishable foods. The Nutrition North Canada program is one of the steps we are taking to attain this objective.

Through targeted contributions and sustainable partnerships, the government is working to improve access to healthy foods for northerners and aboriginal peoples. The Government of Canada has set aside $53.9 million per year for Nutrition North Canada subsidies. Furthermore, because it is aware of the advantages of partnerships, it has involved northern leaders and is working with them to find real and sustainable solutions that will improve access to healthy perishable food in the north.

Furthermore, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada is working with Health Canada to take advantage of community programs on health and nutrition in order to promote healthy food choices.

Agriculture and Agri-Food

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the two-week delay in issuing a recall on meat contaminated with E. coli clearly shows that the Conservatives' cuts to food safety are putting Canadians at risk.

Despite repeated questions last week asking the Minister of Agriculture who Canadians can rely on to be responsible for their food safety, the only clear answer we received was that the Conservatives were not interested in providing the necessary resources to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to prevent food-borne illnesses.

The Conservative government has created a vacuum through budget and program cuts and changes that have left the industry to police itself and Canadians responsible for their own food safety. It is endangering the health and safety of countless Canadians, threatening our ability to keep borders open to Canadian produce and trade and imperiling vulnerable farmers who have just started to get back on their feet after the BSE crisis.

On September 3, U.S. food inspectors at the border stopped a shipment of beef trimmings from XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta, and discovered E. coli 0157. American inspectors informed us of the contamination on September 4, two weeks before the Conservative government notified Canadians that contaminated meat was in the food supply and on store shelves across the country.

In the meantime, on September 13, still three days before the CFIA issued its first recall on meat from XL Foods, U.S. food safety inspectors delisted the XL Foods facility, preventing it from shipping food across the border. It took 13 days after becoming aware of contamination for the CFIA to finally issue a recall, which has since been expanded multiple times and now covers over 250 products. It does not take two weeks to do a confirming test for E. coli. It takes days.

When I asked the minister last week about the delay, he trivialized the issue, a brave choice given his unfortunate reaction to the listeria contamination that claimed the lives of seven Canadians in 2008 on his watch. The minister misled the public by stating that none of the meat had made it into the food supply. Clearly, he could not prove that. Food had been leaving that facility for weeks and it was only when the Americans caught our food safety lapses that a hold was placed on the meat. Now there are at least four people in Alberta who are sick.

The minister said that the recall took two weeks because of testing. That is preposterous. There is no way, as I said, that it should have taken two weeks to get a confirmation. Perhaps he should ask the 90 biologists who lost their jobs through these cuts whether we would be in a better position to protect Canada's food safety if the Conservatives had provided the necessary resources to our inspection officials.

The minister refuses to explain when he became aware of the problem with XL Foods. Why did it take a sudden crisis for the government to even realize how serious a problem there was at XL Foods, which has led to one of the largest recalls in Canadian history?

We cannot blame the inspectors. They are doing the best they can with limited resources. By removing resources and relaxing regulations, the Conservatives are creating a powder keg wherein we have a facility with inspectors who are not all trained on the compliance verification system and those who do not know are not getting all the information.

Clearly, workers were not sanitizing their stations or the meat properly. Inspectors lost the ability to keep an eye on this when the government started handing over more and more oversight to the industry itself.

It was clear from the report issued by the CFIA on September 24 that the plant was not in compliance with a substantial number of standards and requirements, prompting the agency to then shut the doors until it could come into compliance. This does not happen overnight. We are talking about considerable time where self-regulation allowed the plant to get sloppy and, when processors get sloppy, people get sick.

Dr. Richard Arsenault, director of the CFIA meat inspection program, said:

We need to do a better job of managing this data and finding these trends ahead of time...as opposed to having to respond to a crisis like this.

If the agency is already worried, how will it manage under further cuts?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Mr. Speaker, protecting the health and safety of Canadians continues to be one of the government's top priorities.

I would like to point out that the recent budget did not diminish the role of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or Canada's investment in food safety.

All food products produced or sold in Canada must meet our high safety standards.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to review the series of events that led to the recall of a number of beef products over the past weeks.

On September 4, 2012, the CFIA first detected E. coli in products produced in an Alberta facility supplied by XL Foods. At the time, the CFIA determined that a recall was not necessary as none of the inspected product was in the marketplace. The CFIA immediately initiated an investigation to determine the source of the contamination. The agency then intensified its efforts when follow-up tests came back positive. As a result, evidence of a health risk was found and XL Foods voluntarily recalled affected products. As the CFIA continued investigating, more products were identified, recalled by the company and consumers were notified.

The CFIA immediately began tracing new products to identify where they had been distributed. This extensive process is ongoing and may result in more product recalls. The CFIA will continue to alert consumers immediately when it determines there are affected products in the marketplace.

During the investigation, the CFIA identified deficiencies in the plant's E. coli risk management measures. On September 26, 2012, the CFIA temporarily suspended the plant's licence as the deficiencies had not been corrected.

The CFIA acted immediately and continues to investigate and respond accordingly.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, talking points are cold comfort to a 4-year-old in Alberta who has kidney failure. Going through the chronology of what happened does not explain all the mistakes that were made.

Since the member opposite is clearly unwilling to consider the safety of Canadians, I will try another tactic, the economy. The government is currently attempting to negotiate away the very program that caught the meat contaminated with E. coli at the border. Ranchers and cattle farmers are concerned that we will ship tainted meat across the border through no fault of their own and those open doors will slam shut again, just like after BSE. Farmers have every right to be concerned and we owe it to them to protect their livelihoods.

No one wants to see another Walkerton. We know that regulation and budget cuts lead to people getting sick. Will the government support us and all Canadians by reversing cuts to food inspection that are allowing incidents like what happened last month at XL Foods?

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to put the facts on the table and, unfortunately, much of what the member has just said is inaccurate.

In the last four federal budgets, the government has invested significantly in our food safety system. In budget 2011, we committed $100 million over five years to build science capacity and implement inspection modernization, including enhanced training, as well as inspection tools for inspectors. In budget 2012, we provided $51 million over two years to the CFIA, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada for continuing key food safety activities. The recent budget is strengthening, not weakening, the government's commitment to the health and safety of Canadians.

Like all federal departments and agencies, the CFIA is contributing to the government's deficit reduction action plan. By 2014-15, the CFIA will contribute $56 million. However, the most important thing is that over the past two budgets spending for the CFIA and for food safety has gone up by approximately $150 million. Since 2006, the government has hired more than 700 net new inspectors to help the CFIA do its job. Unfortunately, the member and the parties in the opposition have voted against these positive initiatives.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. The House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 6:43 p.m.)