House of Commons Hansard #164 of the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was cfia.

Topics

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

10:55 a.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

I would point out again that I, the Chair, did not leave it in the Senate. Please direct your comments to the Chair and not to other members of the House.

The hon. Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

10:55 a.m.

Conservative

Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK

Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we recognize how diligent you are in your job. We know that you would never drag your heels on this as your NDP colleagues are doing.

When the member talked about 120 days, he forgot about the summer recess when the Senate is not sitting. I wish he would be honest with Canadians. That is the type of thing and misinformation that is constantly being put out there by members like him, and it is just shameful.

Having said that, the member continues to talk about my line that “None of it made it to store shelves”. I actually did say that, but it was pertaining to the September 4 initial containment of the initial tainted product that we found in Calgary and Americans found at the border. It is absolutely true: no recall was necessary. None of it made it to store shelves because we contained it all that very day. The member has seen that on the timeline.

Please be honest with Canadians and put out the right information. The member for Welland should know better than that, after he stepped in the mud up to his ears with his roadkill comments earlier this year.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

10:55 a.m.

Liberal

Frank Valeriote Liberal Guelph, ON

Mr. Speaker, I want to express dismay and frustration, not only on behalf of the opposition, but on behalf of all Canadians who are frustrated with the fact that the Conservative government simply does not want Canadians to know the truth. How can the minister stand and say there were no cuts when his own senior management in the spring, following the presentation of the budget implementation bill, said that there could not be a 10% cut without there being cuts at the front line? The minister continually stands and denies the cuts.

My question is about Bill S-11, which we support. The Meat Inspection Act, section 13, allows the CFIA to demand production of whatever it needs to ensure that the intent of the act is honoured. The owner and operator has the obligation to facilitate and produce those documents. Other abattoirs in the country are getting along just fine with the current legislation. Why are they not finding themselves in difficulty? Why was it possible for CFIA to finally step in and shut the plant down if it did not have the requisite authority to do what it needed to do? Yet the minister continues with this ruse saying that Bill S-11 is the panacea to food safety, that it will solve all the problems. He is hiding behind that bill. We need to know the truth. When will he tell us the truth about what happened?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

Conservative

Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK

Mr. Speaker, we have been doing exactly that since day one. The timeline is well defined. It is on CFIA's website. It clearly shows that the original product that was tainted was contained that day. There was no need for a recall or for searching store shelves because it never got there.

When it comes to the member talking about priorities and planning, of course I signed the letter. We are looking for efficiencies across government, but none of the trimming of CFIA's budget affects food safety. I would challenge the member to point to any particular instance where he can actually show that fact. He is making that up. He is scaring Canadians. I know Halloween is coming, but he might want to save that for when he puts on his mask for Halloween, because it is not true. I am not trivializing. I am very intent on this. The member is scaring Canadians when it is not necessary. There are no cuts to front line food safety proposed or even thought about. None of that is on.

The member also talks about Bill S-11 and the preparation and presentation of documents. Yes, we have rights under the existing legislation, but they do not include demanding those documents and having them delivered in a timely way. Rather than waiting days for an industry such as XL or others to go back through their files and find documentation, we need it much quicker than that. We need it at the speed of commerce, and that is what we are demanding with Bill S-11. We hope he is serious about his support of it and does not drag his heels, as some of his Senate colleagues tried to do.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

Conservative

LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am sure most members recognize that the XL Foods facility is in my riding and it has certainly been very difficult for all of the employees, the community and people across the country. The minister has said, over and over again, that this facility will not reopen unless it meets CFIA safe foods standards.

I know the company had a temporary recall for employees to come back to process, I believe, some 2,500 carcasses. Could the minister tell us what that process was and why it was necessary?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

Conservative

Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK

Mr. Speaker, there are scientific procedures and protocols that are internationally recognized and must be followed in a situation like this in order to get back into export markets and to assure Canadian consumers that the plant has the capacity to produce safe food.

The professional people at CFIA were on site all through this. They continue to work through some existing carcasses that were in the cooler to show the efficacy of the programming that XL has in place.They are called HACPP protocols. We have done that now. We have sent the samples away. Hundreds of samples have been taken from the carcasses that were cut. We are waiting for some of those samples to return.

CFIA people have begun to put together a report on what they have seen, what they have heard and what they have done in the plant during this time. They will have that report for the president of CFIA in the next days. He will compile that, another adjudication will be done by the professional people in Ottawa and once they have that, they will send a letter to me as to whether that plant is ready to reopen.

Last night we heard the announcement that JBS had been brought in as a new management tool. It will run the plant over the next few months to get it back up to speed. We welcome that.

I am here to tell Canadians that the certification of that plant will be as rigorous as it always has been intended to be, regardless of what the management will be. It will have to prove to us, on an ongoing basis, that the plant continues to deliver safe food. There will be continued oversight by CFIA, some 46 CFIA personnel in the plant, with the addition of a couple more during that re-certification process.

We look forward to positive results and to get the industry back on normal footing.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

NDP

Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Mr. Speaker, I have two questions for the minister. Is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency your responsibility? Also—

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

NDP

The Deputy Speaker NDP Joe Comartin

The member should direct her questions to the Chair.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11 a.m.

NDP

Ruth Ellen Brosseau NDP Berthier—Maskinongé, QC

Sorry, Mr. Speaker. XL Foods had a lot of problems at that plant. It had broken sprinklers, improper cleaning, an inadequate monitoring system and thousands of pounds of beef became contaminated. This went on for weeks and weeks. Is CFIA one of the minister's responsibilities?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:05 a.m.

Conservative

Gerry Ritz Conservative Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK

Mr. Speaker, every government agency has to report through a minister. That is the protocol in this place. I have the responsibility to report on plans and priorities and outcomes for CFIA. I continue to do that. The professional people at CFIA in the plant have carried themselves well during this. They are under a lot of stress to perform as well.

My responsibilities as minister stop there. I am not involved in the day-to-day inspection. My responsibility as minister is to continue to build a robust food safety system through the regulatory and legislative channels to ensure that CFIA has ongoing support when it comes to budgetary and manpower requirements. We have proven ourselves up to that task, with some 700-plus front line inspectors being added, 170 dedicated to the processed meats systems. We have increased the budget by some 20% and have addressed all of the issues raised in the Weatherill report. We are ensuring that CFIA has the robustness and capacity to deliver safe food for Canadians.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:05 a.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to this motion, which is a timely one, It follows up on the emergency debate the Liberals had asked for a few nights ago.

This is all about the responsibility for the safety of the food that Canadians eat. Canadians need to know they can buy food, eat it and not get sick when they buy it from a reputable grocery store or from a place where they know the food has been inspected and has a CFIA stamp. That is how the system is supposed to work. The responsibility of governments is all about that.

In the case of food-borne illness, in the case of food safety, there are three groups in the government that are responsible to ensure there is safe food in our country. The first is the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. The second is the Minister of Health. The third is the Public Health Agency of Canada. The three of them, working together, are responsible to ensure that the food we eat is safe.

There is even a written protocol. When there is any question of the safety of food, when there is any hint of contamination of food, this protocol kicks in and implicates these three departments. It gives them very clear guidelines as what their role is and what they are supposed to do.

Ultimately, this issue is about the health and safety of Canadians and their confidence that the government, which is responsible for that, is on the job and on the watch.

Let us look at how the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, who is one of the people responsible for the safety of the food we eat, has handled this.

The minister has mishandled the file from the word go, and for very many reasons.The minister could not give us clear answers. He loves to stand in the House and blame everyone for ratcheting up the noise and for creating anxiety among Canadians. Canadians are anxious because they are not getting answers, because they are not getting very clear assurances about the food they eat. This is at the heart of the problem.

The three groups responsible, the Public Health Agency, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, should be out there every day, if necessary. We saw that happen with the SARS outbreak and with the BSE incident. The Liberal minister of agriculture and agri-food at the time was out there telling people what was going on, everything that was being done and keeping Canadians in the loop. This is at the heart of the problem. Not only could we not get any answers, we could not get the truth. We could not get any rationale for why there were no answers and how and why this happened.

I want to look at the facts.

This was not the first time that the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service had to notify CFIA about Canada's food safety, especially with regard to beef, chicken, et cetera. It seems that Canada cannot not take care of this problem. We have to depend on the Americans to help us out.

Reports show that the CFIA was sent reports by the United States Food Safety and Inspection Service several times in the last 10 years regarding deficiencies found in Canada's meat processing plants, including XL Foods.

The Liberals were in power when this problem was flagged in July 2003. We immediately delisted XL Foods and told it that it had to fix things. Then, when it fixed things in 2004, it was reinstated and put back on the list.

In 2004 the CFIA and the United States looked at the plant and found there were some new problems. At that time, the Liberal government minister warned the plant and told it that it had 30 days to fix it. It was reinstated again in 2005 and everything seemed to be going right.

The U.S. was concerned at the time, and still is, that we were not tracking the trends. Everybody knows that in food processing there is always going to be E. coli and various contaminants because of the nature of the product itself. One is supposed to trend track.

There should always be random testing to make sure there are no sudden rises in super-shedders within the cattle, which are suddenly bringing in large amounts of pathogenic E. coli. That is supposed to be done on a regular basis. The U.S. does it. We do not, even though we have been asked to do it. Of American processing companies, 75% do that. We do not. Why did the CFIA not begin to take action when the government came on the watch in 2006 and the American food safety group told it that this was continuing to happen? It did nothing.

In May of this year, the United States told the CFIA that it was not tracking the trends for E. coli, and we got no answer for that. Here we found that it continued to ask the question and had to do the tracking itself. Having done that tracking itself, that is how it found out that we were having problems on September 4 and flagged it for us because we were not on the watch. The government was not doing its job. It was not watching what was going on.

Therefore, it took 13 days for the government to pay attention after the September 4 notification by the U.S. inspectors. We did not even find that it did bracketing in those 13 days. When it did the recall on September 16, which was 13 days later, it did not bracket. That is an important part of recalling a food. The shipments that went prior to and after the knowledge that the food was contaminated are recalled so that people do not buy it, put it in their fridges and freezers and leave it there not knowing, thinking that it was only from the date the recall was given and onwards that there was a problem. That was not done.

Then it was another two full weeks before the plant was shut down, by which time that food had gone out into the retail grocery chains and was in people's fridges, in small butcher shops and everywhere. People were buying it continuing to believe, as Canadians do, that the government was on the watch and that their food was safe.

I want to hear an answer from the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food as to why it took him two weeks—and we still have not got that answer—why he did not bracket, and why he allowed that food to go out into the food chain, where we do not know who has that food in their freezers right now. It is not a good enough answer to say that people should cook the food properly or, as we heard in the last debate from the parliamentary secretary across the way, that if everyone washes their hands everything will be fine. This is the kind of stuff we are hearing. There is no question here of a sense of responsibility for Canadians, none at all.

That was the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food who completely mismanaged the whole thing. Now we will look at the role of the Minister of Health and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

What should have happened was this. Health Canada is responsible for something called a health risk assessment, which states that it must be completed “in a rapid and timely manner in order to ensure that appropriate risk management decisions are taken to prevent contaminated food from reaching the consumer”. The Canadian mom and dad out there who are cooking steaks on the barbecue must be prevented from getting that contaminated food. That is from the Foodborne Illness Outbreak Response Protocol, which is normally called FIORP. So when I mention FIORP from now on, members will know that I am talking about a protocol written up, agreed upon and signed by those three departments that were responsible.

There was no rapid and timely manner in which that appropriate risk management was taken, or if it was taken it did not get out to the consumer at all. We did not hear about it until September 26, which was two weeks later. We suddenly heard on the Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada websites that there was a problem. In the meantime, 15 people had become ill.

What immediately triggers the Minister of Health and the Public Health Agency of Canada to get involved is that a person gets sick. One person has to get sick. It does not say that a person dies; it says a person gets sick and there is reason to believe or to suspect that there is a potential for more people to get sick.

We know that XL Foods processes 40% of the food in this country. We know it took two weeks for the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to actually even recall. We know it took him a further two weeks, in which this was all over the food retail stores.

Why is it that the Minister of Health did not get out there? The Minister of Health remains silent. There is a deafening silence from the Minister of Health and the Public Health Agency. They get in when a person gets sick. They get in when there is reason to believe that an illness will go across the country, not when people die, not when we have 25 or 30 people sick; there is no magic number. It is said that it is when it reaches over one province. Well, we know that the extent of that food going out in the food chain was across this country. It was not limited to Alberta alone. So the word here is “potential” and we have no explanation at all as to why the silence and as to why this was not done. There is a four-year-old child with kidney failure. As far as we know right now, 15 people are sick from this E. coli outbreak.

The point is this. If we have seniors, young children and immunocompromised people eating that food, they have a higher risk of dying. Healthy people eating it can get very sick and hopefully get better. So it is only a matter of sheer luck that no one died. It is not because of good care. It is not because of good handling on the file. It is simply sheer luck as to who ate this. The Minister of Health was slow to respond and she was silent. She knew about the contamination.

The minute someone gets sick, does not die but just gets sick, and it crosses over one province, the Public Health Agency of Canada takes the lead right away as per the FIORP. The protocol says:

Once a potential multi-jurisdictional food-borne illness outbreak has come to the attention of public health or food regulatory agencies, there is a requirement...

That is a requirement, not a “maybe should”. It goes on:

...to examine the current available information and determine if it is sufficient to indicate the presence of a potential multi-jurisdictional food-borne illness outbreak that requires a collaborative and coordinated investigation and the activation of an OICC....

That is an Outbreak Investigation Coordinating Committee.

The FIORP OICC should be activated when the investigation and response to the identified potential multi-jurisdictional risk of human contamination “...is known or has the potential to be related to a widely-distributed food product”. Read: XL, 40% of the processing of food. How much wider can we get when that food goes all across this country?

We are saying that they have mismanaged the file as well, from the perspectives of the Minister of Health and the Public Health Agency of Canada. The reason the Public Health Agency has to take the lead as soon as a person gets sick is that it has been given the funding to have the capacity and the resources that can be mobilized immediately to assist in the investigation of food-borne illness outbreaks and for surveillance and tracking.

Surveillance and tracking is not just about checking where the meat went. It is in letting every emergency department and all the health professionals and hospitals across this country know that anybody who presents with an illness that is an enteric illness in this case, abdominal illness caused by food, gastroenteritis or whatever we want to call it, that those cases should be reported immediately to decide whether they are linked to this particular thing. That is what surveillance is, and it did not happen, or if it did happen, nobody knew about it, including the people who were supposed to be informed. This again is mismanagement of the file.

Has the current government learned nothing from Walkerton? I say the “current government” because there are three ministers currently on the front benches of the government who were there and had responsibility for what went on with Walkerton. The Minister of Finance, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President of the Treasury Board were there. What the audit on Walkerton says, from the O'Connor inquiry, is that Walkerton happened because of government cuts to food inspection, government cuts to water inspection and privatizing of the system in order to save money. This is what we are talking about. We have to save money when we have a deficit, but we have to save it in places where we know people are not going to get sick, and we do not put Canadians at risk. Did the Conservatives learn nothing from the listeriosis outbreak that occurred in 2008?

We got all of the information from the Weatherill report after that listeriosis outbreak, and the Weatherill report said the same thing that the Walkerton inquiry said. It said that there should be tracking, that the three ministers have to be involved, et cetera. Nothing happened. Four years later, we are facing the same problem because the government went ahead and laid off 200 inspectors since March. The Parliamentary Budget Officer tells us that $16 million is being directly cut from food safety and that there has been a $56.1 million cut to CFIA. This is from the Parliamentary Budget Office; I am not making this up.

The point is that not only did the government not learn from Walkerton but it ignored the Weatherill report that talked about tracking. It did not track the trends in any of the food systems looking for blips and outbreaks. It did not do any of that. It refused to listen to the U.S. that was warning it. We listened when it warned us in 2003, 2004 and 2005. We recalled, we pulled back and de-listed the company. As soon as 2006 came along and the Conservatives became government, they started to ignore it.

We listened to the minister say that everything is great and the government did a wonderful job. There is a saying in medicine. The greatest hospital in the world can have all the right equipment and the most well-trained doctors, surgeons, physicians, nurses and anesthetists who operate on a patient. People can say, “What a successful operation; look at the beauty of the work that was done and all the equipment we have”, but if the operation was a success and the patient died, then the operation was not a success.

The minister can say he has 46 people, 6 veterinarians, has added 200 people to the list and we have all the bells and whistles. It did not work. The operation might have been a success, but the patient died. Even though no one died, the outcome was a failure. That is what we are talking about: the outcome of what was being done. If it failed, it did not work. I do not know how else to say it. If it failed, it failed. If it did not work, it did not work. I do not care what there is in an operating room or anywhere else. If a patient dies, the operation was not a success. Therefore, this is not a success and we do not have answers.

We have snarky comments, snide remarks, smart-alecky, drive-by little insults being used, when the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and the Minister of Health should be standing in the House and giving some form of apology with some humility and saying, “We fell down on the job, we are sorry, mea culpa, and we are going to make sure it does not happen again”. That is what we want from a government.

We saw what the Liberals did when they were in power with the BSE crisis. The minister was out there taking it on the chin but, at the same time, informing the public about what was going on. That is called responsible government; that is called transparency; that is actually caring about what one's department is supposed to do, caring about the outcomes and not constantly hiding behind all kinds of language and excuses. The mistake was made. Parliament should know what happened and the people of Canada should know, because confidence in food safety in this country has taken a blow. Not only that. It has hurt the food processing industry in this country; it has hurt farmers who now do not have the ability to get their steers to the processing plants. They are, therefore, paying the cost of leaving them in the field. They are also finding that the price of grain has gone up. That is costing them.

We are saying that everyone is hurting because of the lack of ability of the government to take responsibility, be up front and tell people so we can get the confidence back in our meat processing system and so the United States will know that we are on the ball, because it does not think we are, and we have not been for a length of time. They have to look over us like a parent looking over a recalcitrant child who is not doing what he or she is told. This is unacceptable. The Minister of Health's silence is unacceptable. The fact is that no one has stood up and assured the people of Canada that the CFIA will enforce the same rigorous food safety standards that everyone should expect of a government.

The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food stated:

Canadian consumers can be assured that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will enforce the same rigorous food safety standards at Lakeside facility regardless of the management.

He said “the same rigorous food safety standards”. I have to sit down at that and ask what same rigorous food safety standards. I do not have any confidence. The same problems are going to be repeated.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:25 a.m.

Peterborough Ontario

Conservative

Dean Del Mastro ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs

Mr. Speaker, I am not that old but I do remember the Liberals' time in government. I remember how badly they messed up the agricultural industry in this country. I remember when they sleepwalked into BSE. Their lack of leadership, investment and a proper understanding of the industry led to the borders being closed for Canadian beef to virtually every destination to which Canadian beef was exported. I remember the harm that was done to Canadian farms. They are still recovering from that.

I grew up on a beef farm. I own farms today. I understand a thing or two about agriculture. I understand that E. coli naturally occurs in meat. To think that we can put in place a perfect system is impossible. We put in place the best system that we can. We hired more meat inspectors. We put $50 million in budget 2012 for more inspectors, $100 million for more inspectors last year and $75 million specifically to implement the measures in the Weatherhill report. That member voted against each and every one of them. That is her record. We will take no abuse from the Liberal Party coming at us from the height of hypocrisy.

How many technical briefings has that member attended since she has indicated that she would like to know more about it?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:25 a.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, I should not be laughing in the House but that question was ridiculous.

What happened in the BSE crisis is on file and it is there for everyone to see. The minister of agriculture at the time was upfront. The Liberal government put in $3 billion to help Canadian farmers weather that problem. It is in the records.

The idea that E. coli is always in the food chain is ludicrous. Of course we know that E. coli occurs in beef. It is an excrement. That is true.

The member should not tell me that we cannot do it, because the United States tracks this regularly knowing that there is a risk. The United States does what the Weatherhill report asks, which is to track the trends to check when there is a super shedder. The Conservative government has not been doing it. The United States told the government that it had not been doing it. The government has fallen down on the job, and it is as simple as that. No whitewash and no insults can make that any different.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:25 a.m.

NDP

Guy Caron NDP Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC

Mr. Speaker, in response to a question asked by my colleague from Berthier—Maskinongé, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food said that his responsibility in all of this was limited to simply developing regulations and verifying legislation to ensure that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can do its job.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is not a crown corporation. It is not a corporation that operates at arm's length. It is a government agency that reports directly to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. Yet the minister himself is saying that he does not have the authority to instruct the CFIA to do something to prevent this sort of thing from happening when information becomes available.

I wonder if my colleague from Vancouver Centre could tell us her thoughts on the question of ministerial responsibility. In her opinion, what is the role of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food in a situation like this one?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, that question is at the heart of what we are trying to say in the House.

I was asked if I went to briefings. I have never been invited to a briefing. That is not the problem. Members of Parliament should be given the answers in the House. That is called accountability. We do not hear the answers in the House when we ask them. The public does not know. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about the ability to let people know.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is responsible to the minister and the Public Health Agency of Canada is responsible to the Minister of Health. These agencies cannot do their jobs well. They do not have the autonomy to do what they are supposed to do. They are told by their masters when to cut and run, when to hide, and when not to disclose. That is not what we expect from our Food Inspection Agency and our Public Health Agency. They should be completely arm's-length.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member should worry much about a briefing from the government because I found out that its briefings are usually propaganda campaigns to cover up what the government is doing.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Conservative

Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK

Are you serious?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Yes, I am serious. I am serious in terms of the briefings by the government. However, I will say that the minister, the CFIA and the Public Health Agency should be out there explaining to Canadians but they have failed Canadians in doing that.

The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food actually hauled the president of CFIA off the stage at one point early in this development.

I have a question for the member for Vancouver Centre. Where is the Public Health Agency in this? We know the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food failed absolutely and his incompetence is shining through, but the Minister of Health has been completely absent from the file. She has the responsibility for the Public Health Agency. Why is that agency not out there doing what it should in terms of explaining to Canadians that food is safe, what is being done to make the food safe and how the system should work?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that question very much because again we are back to the same thing. The Minister of Health has been nowhere to be seen. We have not heard from her.

As I said earlier on when I made my speech, in the file, that absolute protocol has been signed by the three departments to say what happened as soon as someone gets sick, as soon as there is a potential of risk for widespread dissemination, and we know 40% of the company's beef went across this country, the lead on the file becomes the Minister of Health and the Public Health Agency.

However, the Public Health Agency is like the CFIA. It is constrained by what the minister tells it should or should not do. I want to quickly read a commentary from the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which said, ”the ability of the officer to bring issues forward, or to comment freely on matters that may pose a risk to the public's health, may be particularly constrained” by the current way in which it is set up.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:30 a.m.

NDP

Anne Minh-Thu Quach NDP Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my Liberal Party colleague.

We know that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the CFIA, did not have sufficient resources to adequately respond to the current crisis, despite the fact that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food says that there were more inspectors.

It is important for people to know that most of the inspectors working at the XL Foods plant had not yet been trained on how to use the new compliance verification system, even though that system was introduced four years ago.

They had not received proper training because the CFIA did not have sufficient financial resources and inspectors to train them.

Would my colleague agree that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food should have taken the necessary measures to reduce the risk of such a crisis?

The minister should immediately cancel the cuts in order to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:35 a.m.

Liberal

Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member makes a point. The government members may stand in the House and tell everyone until their noses grow that they have not cut, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer, appointed by the government to look at these kinds of issues, said that $16 million were directly cut from food safety, $56.1 million in cuts to the CFIA and that 200 inspectors were laid off in March. Of the 40 inspectors and 6 vets at the XL Food plant right now, only 3 of the 46 inspectors and vets were actually versed in the compliance clarification system and the other 43 were paper pushers and not completely trained.

How do we expect people to do their jobs if they are not appropriately trained and there are cuts? How can we ask the food inspectors to take the hit for this? The minister has to take the hit. The three ministers in this House responsible for Walkerton in Ontario, where people died, are now passing it on to the rest of the country. It is not acceptable.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:35 a.m.

NDP

Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Newton—North Delta.

I thank my colleague from Welland, our current agriculture critic, for his hard work on this file. Just as he worked diligently on the listeriosis outbreak file, he has been on top of this file meeting with producers and asking the hard questions. His back-up staff, Katie and Rosa, have put a tremendous package together for us, information-wise, and I thank them for that.

This is a debate about a crisis. The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and I, both in my former role as critic and now, have had a good working relationship. I feel that I can address concerns to him, which I have done, whether it is in regard to food growers, organic growers or others, and he is there to respond.

However, this is not about that. This is about a serious mistake that was made by him and his department, which is why we are here today. Let us look at some of the timelines that have been gone over and will continue to be discussed here.

On September 3, a shipment of beef from XL Foods tested positive for E. coli at the border. On September 4, the CFIA identified positive E. coli 0517:H7 at XL Foods.

On September 7, XL Foods was formally requested to produce detailed information related to products as soon as but no later than September 10. This was six days after the positive findings of E. coli.

On September 13, the CFIA finally removed XL Foods from the list of establishments eligible to export to the U.S. However, and this is important and interesting, there was still no recall in Canada.

On September 16, we had beef recall number one, the first one. That was 13 days after U.S. officials discovered E. coli.

On September 25, the minister is quoted as saying:

The work with the CFIA to adjudicate the paperwork at XL Foods is being done so that it can start getting back into that lucrative American market just as quickly as possible.

I reiterate that none of the product made it to store shelves....

That is what he said but we found out that the health department and the CFIA determined that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that steaks purchased at Costco Wholesale in Edmonton were actually the vehicle for four cases of human illness.

On October 4, XL Foods finally issued a press release and took full responsibility for the recalled meat. This was the first statement on its behalf.

As we go through this, we can look at the implications. The basic conclusion is that the system, as it applied to XL Foods, was not working. I would like to go a bit further to say that this is a symptom of a major disease that I see coming from that side of the House: the disease of de-regulation, industrial self-regulation.

In the last Trojan Horse omnibus bill, we saw all sorts of provisions to gut the whole environmental review process, to be able to streamline the northern gateway pipeline, taking fish habitat out of the Fisheries Act, and all of this in the name of industry self-regulation, guided by, which I would say seems to be driving the government, the whole Milton Friedman philosophy of de-regulation, privatization and less government.

Budget cuts to the CFIA must be cancelled. That agency must be given the resources it needs to fulfill its mandate for Canadians, that is, to ensure the safety of all food in the food industry.

The Conservatives advocated for increased self-regulation, but now, inspectors are examining paperwork rather than meat. The problems in our food safety system are a direct result of this government's incompetence, and now Canadians are paying the price.

The consumer can now and in the future choose not to eat beef. Obviously we can survive, there are other foods people can eat. However, a cattle producer cannot choose to turn around and start producing something else or go elsewhere. Once again, the farmer has taken the hit because of inadequate oversight by the government in collaboration with industry. That is what has happened here. It is a tough enough market for producers. They do not need this.

The idea that 700 net new food inspectors have been added to the ranks of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is wrong and misleading. This total includes hundreds whose work has nothing to do with protecting Canadians from unsafe food products. For example, the total includes 200 inspectors added to the invasive alien species program, which is designed to keep harmful organisms out of Canada, not safeguard Canadians from unsafe food products.

In fact, since 2006, not a single meat hygiene slaughter program inspector, except to fill vacancies, has been added to the CFIA ranks. There are actually so few inspectors at XL Foods and production is so high, over 4,000 cattle per day, that responsibility for ensuring sanitary conditions at the plant have been handed to the company. As a result of staff cuts in the spring, CFIA will lose 308 positions, many of whom are food inspectors.

Let us move on to a parallel industry, the horse slaughter industry. There are certain drugs that are banned from the food chain in animals. When an animal is given a drug once in its lifetime, that meat is no longer fit for human consumption. Phenylbutazone, which we call the horses' Aspirin, is taken by approximately 80% of the horses in North America at some point in their lifetimes. This only has to happen once and, according to our guidelines, that meat is no longer fit for human consumption.

Over 50,000 horses are imported from the U.S. annually for slaughter in one of our four slaughterhouses. Sporadic checks are made, but every horse is not inspected and the checks that are made are made on muscle tissue, whereas experts say that the kidneys are what should be analyzed.

Aunt Molly sends her race horses in the United States to go to auction, they are bought by killer buyers, shipped under horrendous conditions to Canada, often with falsified documents, and then put in the food chain and the meat is exported mainly to Europe. We know that Phenylbutazone, according to science, has been linked to aplastic anemia in children and other diseases. This is another example of what I consider sloppy oversight on the part of the CFIA. Make no mistake, we can pass the buck to the bureaucracy and I have heard this often at committee. However, the bureaucracy takes its direction from the political head, the minister. That is how it works in our system.

GMO is another example. A recent study called “GMO Myths and Truths: An evidence-based examination of the claims made for the safety and efficacy of genetically modified crops”. One of the findings by scientists is that GMOs can be toxic, allergic and less nutritious than natural food, yet we never hear of our government taking a precautionary principle to study this.

I would like to close with a couple of statements, one by Bob Kingston of the union representing the inspectors. He said that the CFIA did not have the resources in place to fully understand what was going on in the plant at that time. After all, the minister had assured everyone that there were more inspectors working at the plant. He went on to say:

You will be interested to know that at the XL plant only a small portion of inspectors are fully trained in [compliance verification system].

I will conclude by saying, yes, this is a crisis and we need to get to the bottom of it. The minister has to take responsibility to ensure that Canadians continue to have safe food in their food supply and that farmers do not take another hit somewhere down the line because some other plant is closed due to the plant not listening to the union's safety concerns or to having safety oversight in the plant.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:45 a.m.

Glengarry—Prescott—Russell Ontario

Conservative

Pierre Lemieux ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture

Mr. Speaker, I think it is rather unfortunate that the NDP only likes to talk about food safety instead of acting to improve it. I raised previous budgets where we increased funding for CFIA. I also raised the 700 net new inspectors that our government hired. These were all opposed by the NDP.

My question deals with Bill S-11, which arrived in the House today. Despite what the opposition is saying, the bill was in the Senate for 22 sitting days. It is an important bill. It has arrived here in the House. We asked for unanimous consent this morning to have Bill S-11 sent to committee for a thorough study by committee, as happens with all bills. The member and his party denied that consent. I would like to know, does he support Bill S-11 and why will he not give his consent to send it to committee right away so that the bill can move forward legislatively?

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:45 a.m.

NDP

Alex Atamanenko NDP British Columbia Southern Interior, BC

Mr. Speaker, there are two points there. One is the idea of the opposition voting against government bills. This is the unfortunate result of omnibus legislation. When one bill contains all sorts of different provisions, like what I guess we will see today, the opposition is forced to make a decision. Does it support the bill because it has some money in the budget for farmers, or does it not support it because it guts environmental policies and all sorts of other programs for Canadians.

I have been here for over six years and my party does not support that kind of all-encompassing legislation. We, and the other parties in the opposition, have been asking for a breakdown of the bills so that we could look at each one on its merits and either vote for it or against it, but to not have it all encompassed under one bill.

The second part is that we will look at Bill S-11. It will go through due process in the House and we will make a decision, taking the lead of our critic for agriculture, on whether or not we will support the bill.

Opposition Motion--Food SafetyBusiness of SupplyGovernment Orders

11:45 a.m.

Liberal

Wayne Easter Liberal Malpeque, PE

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member for British Columbia Southern Interior. I really enjoyed working on the agriculture committee with the member because he was conscientious on all the issues and was never afraid to raise the tough questions.

On the last exchange, which we consistently get from the government, of “Well, you voted against it”, perhaps the member could clarify this a little further. Is it not an absolute farce that the government is saying that the opposition voted against something?

The money still went through. It did not make a difference. The government is trying to leave the impression that because opposition parties voted against it, for whatever reason, that the money did not happen. In fact, it did happen and the government got the money. Still, it has not been able to handle this file.

The second question I have for the member is because of his experience on the agriculture committee. Bill S-11 is more of the same in terms of messaging and propaganda from the government. The CFIA already has the authority under the Meat Inspection Act. Mr. Kingston, the labour union representative, when they were talking about S-11 in the Senate, said clearly that CFIA already has the powers to do its job.

I ask the member, is that not in fact true? This deals with some other issues. The government should not try to cover it up and say that the CFIA does not have the authority to do what it needs to do. It has that now.