Malcolm Allen

[June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, during question period, I asked the Minister of Agriculture a couple of questions concerning the number of inspectors the CFIA had committed to hiring in a very rapid period of time. According to the CFIA vice-president, 35 are hired, which means they are in some sort of process but are not necessarily in the field inspecting, and an additional 35 are going to hired over the next two years. That was announced on March 23, 2010.

In the House, the minister had said that 170 people were going to be hired quite quickly. There are 35 in some sort of process, 35 to be hired over the next two years and money to hire an additional 100, but there is no mention of when exactly that will happen. Clearly, we were told that the CFIA intended to get 170 people out into the field in meat inspection and ready-to-eat meat plants.

Are the 35 that we know are in the system being trained? Are they indeed working in ready-to-eat meat plants? Are they doing that work? What kind of progress is being made on the 35 that are supposed to be hired, albeit over the next two years? What about the additional 100?

If we are talking about 35 in process, 35 to be hired over the next two years and an additional 100 beyond that, when are we going to see the total of 170 inspectors? Considering the timeframe that the CFIA vice-president has given and the rate at which the CFIA is hiring people, the 170 should materialize sometime around 2014.

That is hardly an immediate response to a need the minister identified. He said that they were on top of this and that they intended to make sure the situation was cleared up. He said the CFIA would have boots on the ground to do the inspection that needs to get done. That is not going to happen in the timeframe it is talking about.

Even the CFIA's own website as of this week shows there has been no progress on hiring the additional 35 inspectors. The CFIA is still out there looking for them. It is some sort of hiring process. There is no indication that it has hired folks and is going through the process of training them. None of those things have materialized.

Where is the commitment that the government says it has to food safety when it cannot get people hired and cannot get them through the process? If it intends to actually do this, it is incumbent upon the government to have people who will do the inspection. That has not happened.

I ask the minister again, can he clarify as to when we are going to see the inspection process at meat plants which the government said it is committed to? The money is there but there are no people. Money cannot inspect plants. Money cannot inspect food. The only thing that can inspect food are people and the CFIA has not been able to hire the people.

Either people do not want to work for the CFIA or perhaps it is just not a priority for the government because it is not actually out there recruiting people as well as it should. At the end of the day, it is about making sure there are folks on the ground who will ensure that the inspection process will be completed.

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, June 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, every year, millions of animals are shipped across Canada. Many are diseased or even die along the way and still end up on our plates. The Conservatives know this and are not doing enough to stop it.

Currently, there is only one inspector for every one million animals going through the system. Even when dead or diseased animals are detected, transporters are let off with a warning or a slap on the wrist.

With barbecue season starting, could the minister assure Canadians that diseased animals will not end up on their grills this summer?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is hard to be brief when we are dealing with 880 pages because there is so much to choose from that has gone wrong. I thank my hon. colleague for his intervention and his quite eloquent speech about what is wrong in those 880 pages.

In the agriculture sector, for instance, we really needed folks to see something in the budget. Did we see anything that really went to help farmers in this country?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I really appreciated the overview of the poison pills that indeed have been before us in the House in previous bills and are indeed in Bill C-9. The member is absolutely correct to bring forward the whole sense that this is a deliberate attempt by the government to continually push legislation that it really does not want to have debated as individual bills, that it incorporates into large omnibus sections and then rams them through with, I must admit that my colleague is correct, the help and complicity of the Liberals who either refuse to come or straight out vote for and allow legislation to pass the House that they then complain about after they have let it go.

If we are going to debate legislation in an honest way for all Canadians, we have to have that legislation before us so we can scrutinize it, so we can help perhaps make it better; or perhaps we should defeat it, depending on what it happens to be.

At all turns, we should have that opportunity. Legislation that is critical to Canadians should not be lumped together.

I know my hon. colleague ran out of time. She is right that there is so much to do and say about the bill. It is almost 900 pages long and there are pieces in it that need to be debated. Obviously that is what we try to do with our amendments.

I know the member wanted to continue on about the $57 billion that was absconded with by both the previous Liberal government and the Conservative government and why she thinks it should be given back to workers.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his interventions and congratulate him for making sure that his private member's bill on climate change and accountability was passed here in this House.

If I were not a suspicious person, it would seem as though because of what we did on this side in passing that bill when the government opposed it unanimously, it is taking other regulations that should be the responsibility of the Government of Canada, that should indeed belong to regulatory agencies, and sliding them off to those who are not accountable to government in a lot of ways and will no longer be responsible to us, allowing them to play fast and loose when it comes to environmental regulations.

But this House spoke. I congratulate the member for his leadership and for his bill and for ensuring that it is on its way to the other place where we hope to see it pass very quickly.

Indeed it seems as though there is a vindictive measure here, in the sense of sliding it back into an omnibus bill, after the House clearly spoke about what we need to do on the environment.

Would the hon. member like to comment on that?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his intervention on Bill C-9. He has articulated very admirably what we see wrong with an omnibus bill that takes a collection of things that really are non-budget related and makes them part of a budget.

I know that he comes from Sudbury, an area that is experiencing a difficult strike at a foreign multinational corporation that does not respect workers.

I wonder what his position would be on whether we should have seen in the budget not only the restoration of the $57 billion in the EI account, but indeed, as one other private member's bill has called for, employment insurance benefits for those who are involved in prolonged labour disputes. Does he see that if we saw restored in the budget what really is budget money—that $57 billion from the EI account—it could have helped those workers in Sudbury who have been on strike for nearly a year?

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would be interested in hearing from the member exactly what Senator Murray said because the Conservatives clearly are not listening.

I know the hard work that the hon. member has done on behalf of the labour movement. She has spent a great many years working on behalf of workers in this country and should be commended for that.

Besides the quote by Senator Murray, which I know the hon. member will be happy to give us, there is the stripping out of $57 billion from the EI fund, a fund that was there to protect workers. I would ask her to comment on why the budget bill is setting up an account for EI rather than the real progressive step of the government saying that it will refund the $57 billion to the EI account, funds that are owed to the workers of this country. In that way, if there were another recession or downturn in the future, which we know will occur, workers would be protected, as they should have been protected in the first place, with the very money they paid into that system and which belongs to them but was squandered by the previous Liberal government and now by the Conservative government.

At the very least, the government should have told workers that their sacrifices over the years are respected, that it respects the fact that it collected their money and, with that type of respect owed to workers, the government intends to give it back to them. However, there is no intention to do that.

I am hopeful that my colleague will comment on the stripping of $57 billion from the EI fund and then, of course, quote hon. Senator Lowell Murray.

[Jobs and Economic Growth Act, June 3rd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his eloquent speech and for pointing out what we should do.

I believe it was Yogi Berra who said that it was déjà-vu all over again. The front bench opposite, the Conservative government, for the most part was the front bench in Ontario back in the 1990s when we would see things like this omnibus bill. We know the havoc that wreaked on the province of Ontario when we had all those omnibus bills under the previous premier, Mike Harris, and some of those members on the front bench, including the Minister of Finance who is in the federal government today. They did the same thing then that is being done today. They rammed things through because the provincial Conservatives had a majority government, and the province was the worst for it.

What the federal Conservatives are doing today is going to make Canada the worst for it as well. The pieces that are in that omnibus bill that do not have anything to do with the budget are things that really should be debated before us today. Let me mention the things that are missing.

What is missing is a pension increase for those seniors living in poverty. The Conservatives decided to talk about getting rid of the environmental regulations, instead of increasing the GIS so that seniors could live in dignity and live without poverty. There was no mention of that.

I would ask the hon. member to comment on what he sees is missing here that really should be a budget item instead of all the other bits that make it an omnibus bill.

[May 31st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary has clearly decided that my voting record is more important than food safety. Ultimately, he still cannot answer the question about how many inspectors they have. They still do not know. Why do they not know? It is because they have not done the very thing that Sheila Weatherill said was the most important thing to do, and that was to get the CVS audit done.

That was her number one recommendation, to get it done and get it done immediately, because it is an absolute failure on behalf of the new system. What do we have? We have delay after delay. Now we are into next fall.

Here is the bottom line: If they want to make sure that the food in this country is safe, they need to get inspectors hired and they need the audit done. We needed it done last September, not September of this year. Of course, they are not there yet.

The question is clear. Will this parliamentary secretary confirm tonight that the audit will be done by September 2010?

[May 31st, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it relates to a question that I posed to the Minister of Agriculture a back some time ago concerning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency when it comes to Ms. Weatherill's report when it came to the CVS system.

Clearly, one of my questions will be, has the government indeed implemented the CVS and has that audit been completed?

Of course, I partially know the answer to that because the most recent report talks about a third-party review of CFIA food safety inspection resources that is under way and is expected to be completed by September 2010.

Unfortunately, in this House, last fall the minister said it would be this spring; this spring, he said this summer; and now, clearly, the ministry says it will be September.

Clearly, one of the questions is when, and if, the CVS audit will actually get completed, because to date it has not been done.

The other piece relates to the fact that U.S. decided to change its standards for what it needed to have in terms of inspection in Canadian plants and we had to comply if we wanted to export, which meant there was a differential between us for domestic product and international markets. We said we would try to cover that off, and we have been doing that with overtime.

So the second question becomes, is the overtime still continuing? Clearly what we said in committee was the number of inspectors we were supposed to get. Mr. Cam Prince said, during committee, that it takes a while to get folks trained, and as of that time, they had 35 inspectors in the system.

So the third question is, are the 35 inspectors out of the system and on the front line? Are we making any progress in hiring the next 35 inspectors that Mr. Prince said, back in March, were needed and would probably happen in the next four to six months, who then said they got additional moneys from the ministry, which I believe to be correct, and said that would hire an additional 100 inspectors? However, of course, he said it is difficult to find these folks.

It seems to me that we needed 170 front-line inspectors for ready-to-eat meat plants. It was accepted that we needed to get that done last fall, and the government said that there would be money available to hire them. The dilemma becomes, as Mr. Prince, who is responsible for human resources, says, there are only 35 in the system, not inspecting but in the system, getting through the hiring process, through the training process, and not out there doing front-line meat inspection.

Clearly, if we have a need to inspect to ensure that the Americans are getting what they require for export, and we are saying from this side of the House, and this member is certainly saying, that if indeed what we need is to have the same compliance for the domestic market, then how are we doing that when it was accepted that we needed 170 new inspectors last fall before the Americans made the change? We are already short 135 inspectors, by Mr. Prince's own estimates of what he needs for manpower, and we now need more because we are working overtime to cover off the demand by the U.S. that we do something different. We have now said we will do it for the Canadian one. The minister clearly said, during committee, that we are not quite doing it yet domestically when it comes to the same standards to the U.S. He said we are doing it in the bigger plants but not quite in all the domestic plants yet.

So the fourth question for the parliamentary secretary is, do we have them all covered now, or are we still trying to do it with overtime?