Debates of Oct. 3rd, 2012

Food Safety

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I talked about what our system actually does in my speech.

I think it is easy to criticize the system, but the system is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It spotted the outbreak, it caught it, and it did what it was supposed to do. That is all I can say.

The fact of the matter is that we have actually increased inspectors, as members know. We have increased the funding to CFIA as well. At the plant in question, there are 46 full-time staff: 40 inspection staff and 6 veterinarians. That is a net increase over what it was a few years ago.

That is the fact of the matter. Obviously we are concerned and we want to see things fixed as soon as possible for Canadians and for our international purchasers. We will continue to do that.

We look forward to the opposition supporting our legislation.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to say that the member for Prince George—Peace River is asking us to accept as fact what is actually fallacy and fiction.

Following the Weatherill report, the former president of the CFIA, Carole Swan, said that PricewaterhouseCoopers was brought in to review CFIA's functioning. The Conservatives speak of all of the Weatherill recommendations being followed, but the fact is that PricewaterhouseCoopers was not hired by Agriculture Canada to do a full comprehensive resource audit, which was requested. They were only asked to deliver a review. Therefore, the full comprehensive resource audit of CFIA, including human resources, has not been done.

It is a fact that the Meat Inspection Act already gives the CFIA the authority to demand all they need in order to protect Canadians and promote food safety. That was repeated in government guidelines issued in February of this year, letting the inspectors know that they had that authority and the processors know that they had to assist and honour any requests.

Finally, the fact is that there were 170 new meat inspectors, not 700. They were all directed to the ready-to-eat meat plants, such as those at Maple Leaf Foods, and none to XL Foods.

Those are three facts. Those are three things that this member would have us think otherwise.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is that challenges on our facts coming from that member is a stretch. I think the House would agree to that. We know who is guilty and that is all I will say.

I will reiterate what our government has done. CFIA has had a net increase of inspectors, bottom line. I am on the agriculture committee and I see this. The fact is that the government has hired over 700 food inspectors since 2006, including 170 meat inspectors. There has been a net increase of inspectors at XL Foods. The facts speak for themselves.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. friend for Prince George—Peace River.

There has been a tremendous amount of confusion tonight between various parties claiming for themselves different facts. I have gone through budget 2012 and tried to figure it out.

There was the suggestion by the parliamentary secretary that there was $100 million in new funding to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, but she referred to the 2011 budget. I have the 2012 budget, which clearly shows that the funding for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is to go down year on year to a $56 million decline, holding steady by 2014. Again, the money that went up was to three different agencies for a two-year period: $52 million over two years split three ways. Potentially it was as much as $8 million to CFIA, while that agency's funding is going down steadily.

I want to put this to my friend. The Weatherill report made a couple of observations that seem not to have been acted on. One of them is found on page iv of the Weatherill report, and this is referring to listeriosis. It says there was a “lack of a sense of urgency at the outset of the outbreak”.

I think we are seeing that again. We are seeing misinformation and delays. The reality of the current crisis is that we do not seem to have learned from the last one.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again, speaking about the concerns for the Canadian public and the concerns about inspection, on this side of the House, we want to reassure Canadians that the inspection agency has caught the outbreak.

We are dealing with it as we speak and responding to it as it needs to be responded to. This is why the agency exists. It is to do this very thing and catch these potential outbreaks as they enter the market. It has done what it is supposed to do. Unfortunately, it happened. Of course, we wish it would not have happened.

To speak to the member's question, I think you just added further confusion for all the people who are watching tonight. I do not think she made it any clearer. Again, I will speak to the fact that we have added 700 food inspectors since 2006. It is pretty simple. It includes 170 meat inspectors. At XL Foods there has been an increase of inspection staff there.

In essence, CFIA did catch it. It is still there and, again, we wish this did not happen. However, the CFIA has done its job and caught it. I think CFIA is doing what it is supposed to do.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I would remind the hon. members to direct their comments through the Chair.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Wetaskiwin.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to start by thanking all hon. members who are present for tonight's debate. This is obviously a very serious issue and in my line of questioning I am not going to downplay the seriousness of this issue. I have the privilege of representing the great people who live in the constituency of Wetaskiwin, a rural area between Red Deer and Edmonton. I grew up on a beef farm, a cow-calf operation. I understand full well the consequences of the BSE crisis that happened in 2003 and the various droughts that have happened throughout my lifetime growing up on a farm.

I am not trying to minimize in any way the very serious question of food safety in our country. I would like to say to my colleague across the way, who also represents a great part of our country and represents a lot of producers, that if this is overplayed too much in the public theatre, the rhetoric coming out of this actually has a detrimental effect over the long term on not only the safety of our food system but also the viability of our beef industry. I wonder if he has any comments or concerns about how this is being played out.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, the thing that seems most disingenuous to me is that members who serve with me on the agriculture committee stand in the House and purport to support the cattle and beef industry. I have good friends on that side. They are hard-working people who raise cattle and who work hard for what they have. To see this hot potato issue politicized in the House is not really serving anyone very well.

CFIA is doing its job. It caught the outbreak. Let CFIA do its job and leave the farmers alone.

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to say that I am going to share my time with the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas.

We are here to discuss a major issue. My thoughts are with the families affected by the tainted meat. That is why we are here tonight. We have heard a lot of background and many facts. What I would like to do tonight is get to the bottom of this, to get to the real heart of the problem. The heart of the problem comes down to two things: the Conservative government's lack of accountability and transparency, which resulted in the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board's refusal to assume his ministerial responsibility, among other things. There is also the matter of the cuts and the impact that the Conservative government's decisions have had on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Let us look back to April 2012. Hon. members will no doubt remember the budget, which was Bill C-38 at the time. The Conservative budget had a number of impacts. First, many public service jobs were eliminated, including—and this was announced in the media—the 825 employees who received a letter in April 2012 informing them that their job was in danger. Of these 825 people, 59 inspectors—people on the ground to investigate and to check the meat, among other things—received a letter confirming that their position had been eliminated. Approximately 40 other inspectors were expected to receive the same message as a result of the Conservative cuts.

A reporter from Postmedia News, Sarah Schmidt, asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board and the department a number of times to specify which positions would be affected by the cuts. She wanted to know whether veterinarians, people responsible for examining seed and inspectors would be affected. She repeatedly asked the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board these questions but never received an answer.

We could probably talk about the Parliamentary Budget Officer's repeated requests for details about the cuts announced by the Conservative government. The Conservatives refused to provide this information, despite the Accountability Act, which should force them to do it.

For a government that has made accountability and transparency its bread-and-butter issue since 2006, that is unacceptable and irresponsible.

What should we make of these 700 new inspectors mentioned time and again by each of the members who spoke this evening and, I would note, who repeated almost the same speech practically word for word. Once again, there are no details about these 700 new inspectors.

A Canadian Press journalist contacted the minister and the Department of Agriculture to obtain additional information, namely what kind of positions were included in these 700 new jobs. These are not 700 inspector jobs, and the Conservative government is deliberately trying to confuse the issue.

The Agriculture Union and the Public Service Alliance of Canada tried to find out the assignments for these 700 new inspectors. They did not get an answer. They managed to come up with an estimate. Of the 700 inspectors, 200 were assigned to monitor imports of invasive alien species, 330 were assigned to technical categories, such as seed examination, and 170 positions were inspectors assigned to processing plants, not slaughter houses.

The case of tainted meat that we are debating this evening occurred in a slaughter house and not in a processing plant.

That is an important distinction to make. Every single Conservative member who has spoken tonight has refused to address this issue and tried once again to confuse the matter.

In budget 2012, the government reduced the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's budget by $56 million. It is in budget 2012 in black and white. The government boasted about having invested $51 million in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and said that there would be no budget cuts, that everything would be fine.

That $56 million represents real cuts. The $51 million, as the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands pointed out, was distributed among three agencies: the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. This $51 million was invested to renew existing food safety programs. These were not new investments. This money went to maintain an existing program, which was created after the listeriosis crisis that hit the country not too long ago, so that it could continue focusing on food safety. So this was not new money. It went towards an existing program. However, the $56 million was cut directly from the agency's funding.

This crisis could end up being a crisis of trust. The Conservatives are accusing us of fearmongering with this issue. We are not fearmongering. It is our role as official opposition to hold the government accountable for its decisions. The budget cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will have a significant impact.

What happened at XL Foods is the tip of the iceberg of what might happen if the government refuses to take responsibility, if the minister refuses to assume ministerial responsibility, which is absolutely essential in our parliamentary system, if the Conservatives continue to deny their responsibility in the budget cuts and to provide misleading information on the true state of things when it comes to meat inspections.

Repeating left and right that they added 700 new inspectors is not helping. No inspector was sent to XL Foods. What is more, one of the most problematic things about XL Foods is that there was a shortage of inspectors on the floor of the abattoir for a very long time. The union sounded the alarm many times about this. New positions may have been created, but not many. The Conservatives are talking about two or six inspectors, depending on who is talking. Those inspectors are filling existing positions that had become vacant. No new investment had been made for XL Foods.

The hon. member for Welland, our agriculture critic, was very clear about this. We are talking about a plant that sped up its processing line. It slaughters 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle. There are 46 inspectors there, but they work two shifts. Twenty-three inspectors work one shift and the 23 other inspectors work the other shift, at a plant the size of several city blocks. It is a very large plant. Having 23 people on site at all times is just not enough, and XL Foods employees have to pick up the slack. It is absolutely irresponsible of the Conservatives to deny this fact and to try to hide it behind various figures.

I know there are Canadians still watching us this evening. It may be 11:10 p.m. here, but it is 8:10 p.m. in British Columbia and 9:10 p.m. in Alberta.

For the people watching us at home, whether in western Canada, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec or the Atlantic provinces, I simply wanted to point out that this is the government they are stuck with at the moment. The comments they have heard this evening demonstrate that this government is happy to throw around half-truths. They have a government that cares only about covering its butt when facing a crisis. They have a government that refuses to accept responsibility. Above all, they have a minister who refuses to accept his primary responsibility, his ministerial responsibility, whereby he should be assuming full responsibility for a tragedy like the one we are facing.

This government's first instinct when faced with a crisis like this one is to blame everyone else apart from the Conservative Party or the Conservative caucus, whether it be the Canadian Food Inspection Agency or the opposition parties. Quebec and Canada deserve better than that. As the official opposition, we have a duty to demand that the government be accountable and remain transparent, which it refused to do in all of the cases we have dealt with here, cases for which the Parliamentary Budget Officer is asking to see the specific data regarding the cuts to be made by the Conservatives. They refuse to provide that information.

It is the government's duty to accept responsibility for what happens, to stop hiding behind numbers, to stop spreading misinformation and, ultimately, to act for the health and well-being of all Canadians. Based on what I have heard here this evening, the government is still refusing to do so.

[Frank Valeriote, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member spoke of the half-truths from the government. I am wondering if he could address two of these half-truths. The first is that they have completely implemented the recommendations of the Weatherill report, when we know, based on statements by Carole Swan, the former president of the CFIA, that the CFIA had not conducted a full or comprehensive audit of all of its resources, including human resources. In fact, she tells us that what did occur was only a detailed review conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which is not a full audit.

The second is that apparently Bill S-11 will be the panacea for food safety, when in fact we know already that the current Meat Inspection Act provides all the authority needed for inspectors to demand the production of documents so they can look at them in inspections, and that it compels the processor to provide the information and assist in the provision of that information, as noted to them in a government-announced guideline in February 2012.

Can the hon. member talk about these repeated fallacies that Bill S-11 is the panacea for food safety and that the government has implemented all of the Weatherill recommendations?

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

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Guelph is quite right.

In fact, not all of the Weatherill report's recommendations have been implemented, and the comprehensive audit recommended in the report has not been conducted. He is quite right about that, and the Conservative government is denying it.

As for the second question, it is unfortunate that Bill S-11 is being introduced in the Senate first. A number of my colleagues mentioned that we would support it, but that we would also recommend, among other things, an in-depth study of the situation we are presently facing and an assessment of the current status of the audit.

Bill S-11 will not be a panacea. We are currently dealing with a situation caused by a problem: the cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which have made it impossible for on-site inspections to keep up with the growth of such businesses as slaughterhouses. In that sense, Bill S-11 will not work miracles.

The Conservatives must first re-examine the cuts and their commitments to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague two very simple questions.

Does my colleague consider Canadian food to be safe? Does he consider Canadian beef to be safe?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, the Conservatives are trying to confuse the matter.

As I said in my speech, what we are seeing now could just be the tip of the iceberg. In budget 2012, the Conservatives imposed cuts by reducing the number of inspectors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which means that we cannot be sure of what will happen with regard to the processing of meat in processing plants.

The government finally increased the number of inspectors to 170, but the work was not done in the slaughterhouses. Answer the question would really take a complete review and verification of what is being done in terms of food inspection.

I cannot give a specific answer to a general question.

Tonight, I would have liked the parliamentary secretary to give us much more specific explanations instead of relying on rhetoric and the talking points imposed by the Conservatives since the crisis began.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in this emergency debate. I thank the members on this side of the House, especially my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques who is splitting his time with me. Also, I thank the staff and pages for staying tonight to be present during this debate.

I also want to commend my colleague from Welland for leading the charge to protect Canadians on this matter, to keep Canadian food safe and to get the bottom of what is happening. I have been following his work both here and on other issues and very much value his expertise on these matters.

I will take a bit of a step back and think about this from a less detailed perspective and about the kinds of things with which governments have to deal. They face all kinds of issues. Some of these issues are reactive in nature, such as natural disasters and things like that. Some of the issues are proactive in nature. Those are plans and programs governments want to introduce. Sometimes governments get these things right, sometimes they get them wrong and sometimes they get them terribly wrong. The types of policies governments get terribly wrong are often called policy disasters.

The worst kind of policy disaster we can have is one where the government gets something terribly wrong and the reason it gets it wrong or the issue that it has blown essentially is something it has initiated itself. Whether it is driven by ideology or incompetence, the worst kind of policy disaster is when the government initiates something and it results in a huge mistake and problem. It is the worst kind of government action. That is what we are facing here. The government is facing a policy disaster of its own making.

Thinking in that context, let us see where we are right now. Canada is currently experiencing the largest meat recall in our history. I do not think anyone in the House would dispute that point. We are a meat producing nation. We export meat and consume a lot of it, but we are facing the worst recall in our history.

Five cases of E. coli have been traced to the XL Foods meat processing plant in Brooks, Alberta. This Alberta plant processed about 40% of the beef in Canada. A problem with this plant is a problem for not only the entire country, but for our export market as well. Incredibly, this factory processes about 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle per day. It is a massive undertaking.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has now recalled more than 1,500 beef products due to possible E. coli contamination. It is not a secret we are holding within Canada. The recall not only extends to every province and territory, but to 40 states in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The plant has been temporarily closed. The closure is impacting beef producers, who through no fault of their own have been caught up in this and the 2,900 employees who work at the XL Foods plant. It paints a picture of the size of the plant for Canadians who have not visited there. The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster has been there on a number of occasions. Twenty-nine hundred employees processing 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle a day is a massive undertaking. Worse, some of these employees are receiving only partial paycheques.

XL Foods plant has had its licence to export to the U.S. revoked. This will have long term impacts not only on the plant itself, but on the whole industry. There are now real concerns that Canadian standards do not match American food safety expectations.

That is where we are. We are at a stage where we have a real problem, a real policy disaster. We have something that we have to address. Unfortunately, on the other side of the House we have had advice like “wash your hands, maybe that will fix it”. That is not really adequate for the type of problem we are facing.

How did we get here? We have had a lot details tonight. We have had a blow-by-blow, almost a minute-by-minute account by the hon. member for Welland. However, to look at it from a larger perspective, with a little less detail, it appears what has happened is a change in culture. It used to be that companies would slaughter and process meats. This is what they are good at. They would buy and process it, package it and ship it out. However, the government inspectors would go into these plants to ensure cleanliness and sterility. They would actually go into the plants, look at the machines, inspect them and give the okay and production would start up again.

These factories are often working on 24-hour cycles. This is an ongoing process and a very important relationship between the government inspectors and the producers.

However, there has been a change in how the Conservatives see this cycle working. It is a belief that voluntary inspections by the companies are adequate. This is not really driven by hard facts. It is driven by an ideology that less government is necessarily better.

In this case, it does not seem to be better. Relying on voluntary actions of companies to ensure they inspect their own equipment is very susceptible to problems and what happens is something is missed. Without having government inspectors doing that work, the proper inspections and enough inspectors to do that proper inspections, we have run into a large problem here.

We have also been told that the inspectors working in these plants are spending more time looking at paperwork that has been given to them by the companies rather than being on the slaughterhouse floor looking at the cleanliness of the machinery.

This is something the Conservatives have done. By cutting funding, by having fewer inspectors in these large plants, we are relying more on the companies to ensure their own processes are adequate and then turning over paperwork to what inspectors are left. It is not adequate. We have the largest meat recall in Canadian history.

At the same time, we have not only had a change in regulatory culture, we also have had a change in the process itself. I have described the XL Foods plant that has 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle going through it a day. What we have seen is a consolidation of the industry to an unprecedented level where we have meat factories that are so big they are almost hard to imagine.

In some cases there are small boutique butcheries that still exist. That is the way food production used to work. There were butchers who would buy from local cattle producers in small quantities. They would be able to inspect all the meat themselves. They would slaughter and butcher the cattle themselves and sell it to clients in small batches. If there was a problem, meat inspectors could sort that out. Now we have huge factories that are processing at a massive speed.

I have learned a lot about this industry from my father-in-law Thomas Ashe and his very good friend Peter Markin who have been butchers their entire lives. They started in the slaughterhouses in Belfast, Northern Ireland and moved to Canada and brought their trade here. They have been doing this job for decades.

I have sat down with both of them and talked to them about the process by which they as butchers see how things have changed in Canada. They have seen the industry grow from these small butcheries to the massive plants we have today. There are no bigger advocates for adequate food inspection than these two men who have seen this industry almost spin out of control.

Tommy and Peter have told me of their concerns, about how the reduction of meat inspectors will lead to disease and how a little tiny piece of meat left in a machine overnight can spin into a very big outbreak of certain kinds of diseases, like E. coli, that can be very harmful and deadly to consumers.

They also talked about how these were worst kinds of diseases for people to get. They strike people when they are unaware. They think their food is safe, but it is not. This is the problem we are facing.

There are lessons we can learn about the slaughterhouse floor from men like Tommy and Peter.

Also, the thought of how the Conservatives are systemically altering our approach to food inspection is a big problem. I do not like to say it, but if the Conservatives continue down this path, we will see more of these kinds of outbreaks.

If we continue to reduce the number of inspectors actually on the slaughterhouse floor and in the processing plant ensuring that the things are clean, we will see more of these outbreaks. I am very scared of that. The Conservatives have not just created this one policy disaster they are in fact inviting many more to happen and it will be a systematic series of disasters that we will face.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, as a cow producer and as a person who has taken a meat cutting class and spent time slaughtering my own beef at home, I can tell the House that there is a world of difference between the health controls in the smaller, local, community-type abattoirs versus what we see under the stringent controls of the federal government. There are different standards in this country from provincial to federal and the federal standards that we have for food inspection far exceed, from the standpoint of the technology used, the equipment and cleanliness that is required, and the inspection that is provided by the CFIA in federally inspected plants like XL Foods.

Let us talk about the facts. This plant used to have 38 meat inspectors, including 6 veterinarians. It went up to 8 veterinarians and a total of 46 inspectors in that facility, an increase of a net 8 more in that plant doing critical analysis of all of the product going through that plant on the lines to ensure that the meat going through was being inspected. Unfortunately, XL Foods did have some slippage.

What we need to remember here, and I want my hon. colleague to remember this, is that we want to ensure the consumer that mistakes sometimes happen, we need to recognize that, but the food system in Canada, 99% of the time, is safe. The produce that is being produced by our agricultural producers and the cattle producers that I represent and those across this country are producing a great--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. There are other members who wish to put questions.

The hon. member for Burnaby--Douglas.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take the word of Tommy and Peter. They have not only worked in small butcheries themselves but they have also worked in large slaughterhouses and they know exactly how inspections work. I have sat through many evenings when they told me this distinctively.

Canada brought in a tightly regulated meat inspection regime in the 1960s and it was based on having food inspection agents on the floor ensuring that these machines are clean 24 hours a day. When we have voluntary compliance by companies, especially in these megafactories, there will be mistakes, and that is why we have had the largest recall of beef in Canadian history.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question that we have a quality product but we now have a minister who is clearly incompetent and a Minister of Health who is every bit as incompetent.

When Bob Kingston, president of the agricultural union, was before the Senate committee yesterday he had an explanation. He first talked about the compliance verification system and he had this to say, “How could this be, you might wonder? After all, the minister has assured everyone that there are more inspectors working at that plant than ever. You will be interested to know that in the XL plant, only a small portion of the inspectors are actually trained in CVS. That is right; for more than four years after CVS was introduced, most inspectors there have not been trained in how to use it. Why, you might ask? The answer is actually simple. The CFIA cannot afford to deliver training any faster and does not have enough inspectors to relieve those away while being trained”.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. We need time for the hon. member to respond.

The hon. member for Burnaby--Douglas.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it really is the general approach that the Conservatives' are bringing to this country that we should question. We see them on the planes reading Hayek and Milton Friedman. The whole idea is that government is the enemy and it has to be reduced. This is what is happening in the food inspection world. Fewer inspectors are better for the Conservatives because it is less government. Frankly, that is not working. We have the largest meat recall in Canadian history and the Conservatives have blown it, so has the minister.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Minister of State (Finance)]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to stand and take part in this debate. However, I want to clarify a comment that was perhaps made by me earlier. My friend from Burnaby—New Westminster pointed it out. When I was being heckled by the loudest heckler in this House, the member for Malpeque, I perhaps misspoke. He is renowned for his heckling. He can heckle from P.E.I., even when he is not in the House.

I want to clarify that this is a serious and major event in the Canadian food industry. There is no getting around the fact that it has impacted lives, and it is very important that we recognize that. Our thoughts this evening go out to the families of those who are impacted by this, who have become sick from this. It is the worst outcome for any Canadian that an individual can become ill from eating food grown in this country.

My friend from the Interlake, in Manitoba, has talked about his experience with the cattle industry. I too grew up in the cattle industry. It concerns any producer of livestock. It concerns any vegetable producer in this country when E. coli is traced back to vegetables. As members know, that can happen in this country. There is no such thing as zero risk when people are producing food. Farmers do their best to ensure that the products they provide to the slaughter facilities are in the best shape possible, and they trust them to the slaughter facilities.

We have a lot of information going across this floor tonight. Certainly there are some serious problems.

I will refer to the Cargill plant in my riding, which has a very good track record. We do not want to condemn the whole industry. It is an important industry. It is an important source of protein for Canadians.

I cannot help but repeat the fact that I am very disturbed that the opposition members are playing pretty loose with the facts. We have a food safety system in this country that is revered around the world. We have a Canadian Food Inspection Agency whose role is to do its best to protect Canadians and the food they are going to consume.

They are only human beings, and people make mistakes. We need to learn from those mistakes. We have learned. We shut the plant. No more meat is coming out of that plant until it is proven safe. A lot of the rhetoric that has happened here this evening is simply political posturing. The plant is not producing any more meat. The meat has been recalled. Perhaps more needs to be recalled, and that will happen, because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is on top of that. It is making sure that the meat comes back and that consumers are reimbursed for it.

I repeat that there is no such thing as zero risk. CFIA brings the risk down as low as it can. CFIA is there in numbers. I have visited plants in my riding and have watched the number of CFIA inspectors. I have met and talked with CFIA inspectors as they do their jobs. They do an incredible job. They are dedicated people. Their role is to protect me as a consumer and all Canadians as consumers. They are dedicated people. They do their best, and we respect those individuals for what they do.

It is unfortunate that we are seeing a lot of misinformation being spread. There have been many references to the number of CFIA meat inspectors we have. The number 700 has been mentioned many times. That is 700 more than we had before. That is important. As I said, at the plants I have visited, there are a lot of inspectors. We now have 700 more.

The Weatherill report told us that there were concerns, so we added to the number of inspectors. That is what is important. There have been 700 more inspectors since 2006. If I recall, under the former Liberal government, there was a slashing of the number of meat inspectors. I forget how many, but it was quite a few. That was part of why the Weatherill report recommended that we ramp that up and get it back up to where it should be. In fact, we are now higher than we ever were.

Speaking of the Weatherill report and its 57 recommendations, we have increased the budget for CFIA by $156 million.

I hear my heckling friend from Malpeque. I would think that by this time of night he would be starting to lose his voice, but apparently not.

There is a total budget for CFIA of $744 million. That is an increase of 20% to make sure that we have the right number of people on these lines to ensure that we catch incidents such as what happened at XL, which is very unfortunate.

If the opposition believes that the powers of the agency are not sufficient, it should support the legislation referred to many times to this evening, the safe food for Canadians bill, to make sure that the CFIA has greater authority to demand reporting. That is very important.

Let me be clear that the plant will not reopen. That is a critical fact. What we are hearing tonight are suggestions that this meat is being spread around. It is not. What is out there is being recalled, and no more is leaving that plant. That is not without impact. It is important that we protect people, and that is why that was done.

While we are putting facts on the table, let me also refer to CFIA's response, which started on September 4 when it first detected E. coli O157:H7 in products produced at the XL meat plant in Brooks. That very same day, the CFIA was notified by the United States Department of Agriculture about the detection of a positive sample of E. coli O157:H7 found in trimmings from XL beef.

The CFIA quickly verified that no affected product from that September 4 batch was in the marketplace, and it immediately launched an investigation into XL to determine the source of the contamination. This led to some products produced on August 24, 27, 28 and 29 and on September 5 being recalled to further protect Canadian consumers. The CFIA is continuing that investigation.

I have just given a vastly short version of a very complex series of events. A more detailed account is available on the CFIA website for anyone who is interested in seeing it. As the situation changes, CFIA updates it on its website to provide information to consumers and protect them.

My point is that these situations and what we know about them are constantly changing. As a result, the severity of the risk to the public must be constantly assessed and then reassessed. On any given day, the CFIA can communicate only the evidence that has actually become available, with the understanding that events are changing minute by minute. It would be useful to recap what we know so far.

As I said, the events began on September 4 with a routine inspection that revealed that E. coli was present in raw beef trimmings. The CFIA quickly determined that no potentially harmful products had ever reached the Canadian marketplace. As a result, there was no immediate recall of food at that time. Instead, the CFIA notified XL Foods about that contamination and began investigating the possible sources of it. On the same day, the CFIA's American counterpart notified the agency that it too had found E. coli in beef trimmings from that same plant.

Over the next few days the CFIA moved forward on several fronts. On the one hand, inspectors augmented their level of oversight at the plant. On the other hand, the agency continued to investigate the source of the contamination and whether there was a connection between the Canadian and the American test results, because at that time it was not confirmed.

During the early days of the investigation the CFIA and the company worked around the clock to determine the cause of the contamination. Under normal circumstances the CFIA has 40 inspectors and 6 veterinarians assigned full time to the XL Foods plant in Brooks. As a result of detecting E. coli, the CFIA added even more oversight at that same plant.

The company took initial steps to protect the safety of food being produced. It also committed to take additional steps to deal with all of the issues and make sure that this would not happen again.

The CFIA then sent in a team of technical experts to turn the Alberta plant upside down. They looked at preventative control measures, food safety policies, laboratory methods and quality control systems. The technical experts did not identify any one single factor that would lead to E. coli contamination. Instead, a number of isolated deficiencies were actually uncovered. Together, they played a role in the overall contamination.

On September 16, the CFIA had sufficient evidence to issue health hazard alerts. The company began recalling beef trimmings for three specific days of the production. In the meantime, the agency continued its investigation and on September 18 issued five additional requests to the company for corrective action.

The CFIA is working hard to identify potential products that could be contaminated. Once the beef leaves the plant it can be turned into anything from sausage to frozen meat patties or be further processed by other companies into pizzas, lasagna or whatever. It could end up in a number of different retail stores. It is a very complex tracing process that has been undertaken.

This information is not available at the click of a mouse. It requires sifting through production and distribution records from industry, as well as conducting tests on samples. As a result, the CFIA issued several health hazard alerts for the same food recall. Each one had more updated information than the last.

Events continued to unfold very rapidly. On September 21, new evidence compelled XL Foods to recall beef trimmings produced on two additional days. On September 24, there was a report of positive E. coli on a sample from XL Foods in California. A day later, Alberta Health Services had linked four illnesses to steaks originating from XL Foods. On September 26, based on the company's information and the CFIA's investigation, it was clear the company had not corrected all of its deficiencies. The very next day, the CFIA temporarily suspended the company's licence to operate. At the same time, the company expanded its voluntary recall of products produced on those same dates in August and September.

The CFIA continues to take comprehensive action in response to the E. coli issue. To that end, the CFIA will reinforce its commitment to protect consumers. As a result, if additional products are uncovered in the days ahead, CFIA will continue to alert consumers immediately. The agency is running a transparent investigation and publishing information on its website as soon as it is available. Canadians can also sign up for email updates or tweets to get information on recalls and food safety concerns even faster.

Let me add that the plant is closed and will remain closed until the president of the CFIA satisfies the minister that the licence should be reinstated.

In an investigation of this kind, evidence is not handed to specialists on a silver platter. The facts emerge slowly but surely, and when the facts become known, they are shared with Canadians.

I want to take a few minutes to express my support for how the government is addressing the need for updated food safety legislation in Canada.

I want to inform the House about some aspects of the new food safety bill, the safe food for Canadians act. As members know, the NDP agriculture critic has said that his party will oppose this proposed legislation. I fail to understand how that would have any benefit in protecting Canadians.

The proposed legislation fulfills a recommendation of the report of the independent investigator into the 2008 listeriosis outbreak. The independent investigator's report made it clear that legislative renewal was necessary for the government to fully meet its mandate and the expectations of Canadians. Our government committed to address all 57 of the independent investigator's recommendations. This is the last piece needed in order for us to follow up on that commitment.

New legislative provisions are needed to position Canada to deal with new technologies and the realities of food production in the 21st century. The food safety environment is more complex today than it was just 10 years ago. The right tools are needed to properly manage today's risks and to better protect Canadians from unsafe food.

Canadian industry has long been requesting a provision prohibiting a person from tampering with, threatening to tamper with, or falsely claiming to tamper with food products.

The government also needs the authority to directly address those who perpetrate hoaxes on the public. Hoaxes generate unnecessary public fear around certain products and can also be economically devastating for the producer of the product that is targeted by a hoax. With this bill, we would have the ammunition to deal in a much more immediate way with hoaxes and report them to the public. Of course, the NDP is committed to opposing this important legislation.

Lifestyles are changing and the world is changing due to advances in science and technology. Technology is changing food manufacturing processes. International best practices, new scientific tools and advances in developing food safety systems have guided Canada's move to strengthen its risk-based inspection system. The bill continues this and supports that direction.

The proposed legislation would also provide for more flexible and effective tools to thoroughly and efficiently assess innovative food products and claims so that Canadians can have timely access to the safe products they want. Indeed, consumers want this. They are seeking updated food safety legislation. We have long recognized the need for modernization.

Consumer groups, producers and industry have gone down this path with the government before. Several attempts have been made over the past decade to get this done. This proposed legislation, one could argue, is the culmination of 10 years of consultations, as there were previous attempts to modernize.

I am pleased to have been able to contribute to this debate. Once again, I want to offer our sincere thoughts to those people who have fallen ill from this.

It is good that we are talking about this, but I would implore the opposition to keep the rhetoric down and not to frighten people unnecessarily. People understand this is a serious issue. I would beg the opposition not to politicize it further.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me use some computer jargon: revision 6.0.

As the agriculture critic for the New Democratic Party, I have repeatedly said in the House that we are saying yes to Bill S-11. Amazingly enough, it seems as though the other side cannot take yes for an answer. The Conservatives keep saying that we are not in support and we keep telling them that we are. However, we have some very good suggestions.

I am glad you have finally understood. It only took four hours for you to finally understand that yes means yes. Maybe you should not keep passing the same notes around.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I would remind hon. members to direct their comments through the Chair.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think they should pass those notes around.

On a more serious note, Bill S-11 talks about giving inspectors more power than they supposedly do not have now. Section 13 actually gives them the very powers that this new bill supposedly gives them, so they actually have it. That is one fact.

I have two questions for the Minister of State for Finance.

On September 13, the CFIA, not the Americans, lifted the licence from the plant to export to the U.S. Why did it not stop it for Canadians?

As the Minister of State for Finance, he would know how the system works. In fact, the report on plans and priorities signed and tabled by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food on May 8 of this year says that approximately $46.6 million and 314 full-time equivalencies will be removed or will decline in the present budget year. Does the Minister of State for Finance agree with me that is actually going down and not up when that is signed by the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food? In other words, the money is coming out and the equivalencies are being lost.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

There are a number of members who wish to put questions. We have only seven minutes remaining. I would ask members to keep their questions to one minute and one minute for the response, at the most.

The hon. Minister of State.