Malcolm Allen

[Food Safety, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, let us be clear. It is the government's cuts and policies of self-regulation that have failed.

In this case, XL failed to protect food safety. By the time the CFIA inspectors got involved, the contamination had spun out of control.

Yesterday, CFIA's director of meat programs division called this “an unprecedented situation”. He is right.

When will the Conservative government start taking responsibility for its failed policies?

[Food Safety, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is simple. Canadians want safe food for their families, and it is the Minister of Agriculture's job to make sure they protect it.

September 3 was the first positive test for E. coli, yet it was not until September 26 that the XL plant in question had its licence suspended. Here we are, with 12 beef recall notices encompassing 1.9 million pounds of suspect E. coli-contaminated beef.

Why did the Conservatives' new regulations not work to protect Canadians? Will the Conservatives now admit that self-regulation does not work?

[Food Safety, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I doubt whether the minister knows September 4 from September 16. What we do know is that American inspectors caught that contaminated meat, not Canadian inspectors. That is a failure on the government's part.

The lack of details on this particular recall is disturbing. It is absolutely alarming Canadians, and Canadians are worried.

When will Canadians start getting straight answers, and when will the Conservative government admit its failure in food safety policy because of its draconian cuts to CFIA?

[Food Safety, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, on September 26, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food said, when referring to the XL beef recall, “None of it made it to store shelves. The recall is ongoing”. The reality is, the Alberta health authority has confirmed four cases of E. coli from meat that originated from the same processing plants involved in the nationwide recall.

Will the minister continue to deny and contradict officials from CFIA, or will he stand in his place and admit contaminated meat has reached store shelves across this country?

[Food Safety, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we have seen this all before. When the minister fails to put the concerns of consumers first, Canadians suffer. Concerns are growing over the ever-expanding beef recall. The XL Foods Lakeside plant has been decertified from exporting meat to the U.S. and is cutting shifts. Yet all we get from the minister are contradictory and unclear statements. The government's regulatory changes and funding cuts are undermining faith in the CFIA and may have caused a delay in the recall.

When will the government start providing answers to Canadian families?

[Pork Industry, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is a looming crisis in Canada's pork industry. Drought conditions across North America have increased the price of feed. Some of Canada's largest pork producers have filed for creditor protection.

It is estimated that pork prices in the summer of 2013 will be the highest in Canadian history. However, all the government can do is hem and haw about plans it may or may not have to deal with this crisis.

When the NDP raised the issue of drought conditions last week, the government was entirely dismissive. It did not see a crisis. It did not see a need for action.

However, in a letter to the NDP leader from the Alberta Pork board of directors it says, “Without significant support...the pig industry in Canada will most definitely begin to collapse within the next few months”.

We, in the NDP, stand with producers and, like them, demand action from the government, not just words, to address this devastating crisis. When will it act?

[Food Safety, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the handling of the XL Foods meat E. coli outbreak is the latest example of what is wrong with the Conservatives' dangerous changes to CFIA.

Hundreds of potentially E. coli contaminated beef products were shipped to every province destined for families' dinner plates. From the very first detection of E. coli, CFIA waited two weeks to issue a recall. This spring the minister said, “The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is not making any changes that would in any way place food safety at risk”. That claim is a joke.

Why did the Conservatives gut regulations and put Canadian families at risk?

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, to reaffirm the position my friend laid out, we cannot remain silent. Those of us who see it need to speak up and say no. That is how to deal with a system that is unequal. That is how we put an end to it. It cannot just be a memo or an instruction. It has to be about everyone within the culture saying, “That is not how we operate, and we will not get away with that”. We have to stand tall as men when it comes to harassment of women in the workplace and say no to male co-workers, telling them that they cannot get away with it. We have to help with that.

I think the member is correct. If this is what someone does inside, then why would they not do it somewhere else? It is not as if someone on the job is saying that they would not do those things out there, because the tendency is for one to reiterate the same sort of feelings and contempt outside. That is why a civilian complaint authority is absolutely needed. There are complaints from civilians and we have seen them. The Dziekanski case is out there. We need to have a civilian complaint oversight body to actually take care of it.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I understand that the folks the member has talked to say that they do not believe it is systemic, but what I witnessed in the auto sector in the mid-1970s is indeed exactly the same thing within RCMP. It was systemic.

If someone is being told they will be promoted or will be moved sideways, it is the system that is doing that. The system is saying that it is okay for them to do what they did and that it will just shuffle them and put them in a different place, and that it will do so again.

The issue is that we actually have to stop it. We have to have the leadership to say that if this continues the person will not be there any more. It is not good enough to simply say “Oops, that was nasty“, and give them a slap on the wrist and a promotion to do something else. Rather, this issue has to be condemned and must be ended.

Where women and men are in the workplace, they must always be equal. They can be nothing less than equals. We put a stop to it when men in an organization, and I say this with purpose, actually accept women as equals in the workplace.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Hull—Aylmer for allowing me the opportunity to speak to this very important bill.

We have said quite openly that we support the bill at second reading, but we see opportunities to amend the bill to actually make it better. There are things that have been omitted simply because they were not thought through. They are not omissions by default or just because, but there are other things we could actually do.

My colleague pointed out the systemic nature of this, but I will quote Commissioner Paulson's testimony before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, where he said:

It's the culture of the organization that has not kept pace...We haven't been able to change our practices and our policies, or provide systems that would permit women to thrive in the organization and contribute to policing, which they must do....I've said it publicly, and I'll say it again. I think the problem is bigger than simply the sexual harassment. It is the idea of harassment. The idea that we have a hierarchical organization overseeing men and women who have extraordinary powers in relation to their fellow citizens, which requires a fair degree of discipline.

What he talks about is what I saw as a very young person, when I was a student and worked in the auto sector. That workplace was dominated by men. There were very few women in that workplace. There was a culture that had evolved over the years. That culture needed to change as we saw the workplace change. However, when we saw the workplace change, its culture lagged behind. We took steps to remediate that, such as through harassment training in the workplace, so that people felt protected. They could come forward knowing there was an investigation process that was neutral and unbiased, that was not going to be heavy-handed for either party, regardless of who the complainant was or who the person being complained about was. People knew the process was available and that they could take part in that process.

Unfortunately, we have seen over the last year or so that former women officers of the RCMP have come forward after leaving the RCMP. It was a career that they desired and cherished, but because of the actions and the culture inside the organization, they felt they had to leave. Now they have finally come forward and said that all of that needs to change. They are standing up and saying to us as the policy-makers that we need to change the organization so that does not happen to other officers ever again, that people would have to leave their job because of the culture they faced within that workplace.

This is the 21st century and the national police organization finds itself mired in the 19th century. I guess this is better late than never, as one would say, but it is too late for those who have left. We will have to find a way to remediate that. The appropriate authorities will have to do that.

It has been mentioned that there are some misgivings in the sense that the powers in Bill C-42 would be arbitrarily given to the commissioner. The commissioner would become the absolute judge.

In every organization there is always a final decision maker, whoever that may be, but in this particular case, there is no balance. There is no balance for the person who perhaps would be subject to discipline and dismissal. One needs to find the balance, because what could happen is it could have the opposite effect. Folks would be forced into not coming forward because they thought the charge may end up in a dismissal and they would not want that to happen. We would end up with a system that still would not work.

The RCMP is our national police organization. I know that a lot of folks who live in Ontario and Quebec do not necessarily see the RCMP, but for folks in the west, the RCMP is a very visible police organization. We want to have an organization that functions well, which it does.

I also need to say that the vast majority of RCMP officers in this country do remarkable work. They go to work every day, work hard at what they do and do the things required of them under the act. They are good employees and good folks to work with. Unfortunately, there is an undercurrent of the situations that we have witnessed. We have heard about the nastiness of those things and we are now trying to address them. Bill C-42 is a step in the process of finding a way to resolve the issues that came up in the past and to ensure they get rectified and do not happen again.

In my view, we need a sense of independence and an independent body that can look at this organization and not appear as if it were the army. The army has a process as well, which is an internal one. That is justifiable and fair for it. However, this is a police organization that deals with citizens, the folks who interact with it. We need to have a civilian oversight authority that actually has authority and teeth. This is the only policing organization in this country that does not have civilian oversight. Municipal, regional, and provincial police forces in the case of Quebec and Ontario have civilian oversight. The RCMP does not.

That being the case, Bill C-42 has to address the issues of how we can give authority to civilian oversight so that folks can see that complaints are indeed taken seriously, are dealt with effectively and that the remedies that come out the other side are fair and just. I say this because in every remedy, there are two parties. There is always the complainant and there is the one who is aggrieved, and they deserve justice on both sides of the ledger. If we end up with an arbitrary process, there will always be someone who feels as if his or her grievance or complaint has not been handled judiciously in a fair and even-handed way. We would end up back at the same place we are now, with people coming forward and saying that the system did not work when they were involved with it.

I have heard members on both sides of the House say many times that they do not believe people should go to work to be harassed. They should go to work to do the work that we ask them to do, regardless of where they happen to go. Mr. Speaker, you say that you will not condone harassment in the House. However, we have this national organization that for far too long has allowed that to happen and a system to take hold that perpetuates it. It is not even the nudge, nudge, wink, wink routine. It really is a systemic issue, which is much harder to remedy than situations where someone simply does something untoward to someone else, which can then be dealt with by an immediate supervisor by taking the person aside and remedying that particular situation.

When it becomes a systemic issue, it literally inculcates the entire organization and then it becomes okay. If one takes oneself outside of such an organization and steps to the side, outside of the organization one would say in everyday life that others should not do that. However, because it is systemic, when one steps back into that role, it becomes a case of, “Well, that's what we do”. Moreover, because it becomes the norm, “We will continue to do it”. Even though individually we might think something is morally reprehensible, that we would never do it at home, never do it to our neighbours or to our broader community, as soon as we step inside the organization we think it is okay, because the system says to us, “That's what we do”. We need to put an end to that. I think everyone in the House wants to put an end to that.

That is why New Democrats want to send this bill to second reading and improve it. There are opportunities here to improve it. I believe the minister is telling us to bring our amendments forward, that he wants to work on the bill together. I commend the minister for that. Ultimately, we need to make Bill C-42 work for the good women and men in the RCMP and, indeed, the broader public across this country. Let us put the pride back in the RCMP that Canadians have always had in it, and which I know the officers in the RCMP truly want back again so that the organization is the proud organization that we all know it can and will be in the future.