Mr. Speaker, there are limits to shirking responsibility for what goes on in one's own department.
The United States discovered the problem on September 3, and yet the plant at the centre of all this remained open for another three weeks, until September 27. Thousands of Canadians were exposed to E. coli because of this unacceptable delayed reaction.
Why did it take 24 days to close a plant that was known to have such a problem?