Ruth Ellen Brosseau

[Food Safety, November 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that the minister has no idea what is going on in his department. He has lost control of his department and refuses to accept the consequences of the budget cuts. It is no surprise that Canadians have lost all confidence in him.

How many recalls and lives at risk will it take for the Prime Minister to tell us whether he approves of how the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is handling this file?

[Food Safety, November 29th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the CFIA memo said, and I quote, “Our number 1 priority is to ensure this standard is met with Japan eligible carcasses”.

We have a serious problem when food inspection depends on what country the meat is sold to.

Why is the agency's priority not ensuring the health and safety of Canadians? Why is the meat sold to Canadians lower in quality than what is sold to Japan?

[Empire Shirt, November 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, Empire Shirt, a company from my riding, approached me to share its concerns about the Tailored Collar Shirts Remission Order. This order is very important for the survival of companies like Empire Shirt, which has been in business for over a century.

This order enables the company to keep a high percentage of its production at its Louiseville factory instead of importing it, which benefits the region's economy and provides jobs. The Conservatives are saying that this program costs too much, but why not look at a better way to manage the program to benefit the companies that really need it? This way, the program would be much less expensive and would be sustainable.

On behalf of Empire Shirt, its employees and other business in my region, I urge the government to maintain this program that will expire on December 31, 2012. This is a perfect opportunity to take real action to save Canadian jobs.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague's speech was powerful and moving. He is always a pleasure to listen to and his points are very valid. I find it hard sometimes being heckled and laughed at by the Conservatives. It is not always a fun thing.

Could my colleague speak to ministerial responsibility, what happened with XL Foods and what happened afterward?

I found there was a huge lack of transparency and communication on the part of the government. Could my colleague elaborate on how important it is to be transparent, honest and open, especially when it comes to the safety of Canadians every day?

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

In Canada, we have strict rules. Our food safety system is good, but without a doubt nothing is perfect in life. In light of what happened at XL Foods, I believe that there was a problem at the plant, a problem at CFIA and perhaps also a problem with the number of inspectors. There were a number of problems. However, it is obvious that there was a lack of transparency. We do not know what happened. I believe we have lessons to learn from what happened at XL Foods. We can do better. It was an important lesson. So why not accept our amendments in order to do better?

Our food safety system is good, but we want it to be better. The opposition members are the only ones speaking today. I believe we had a few questions from the Conservatives, which is good, but why are they not talking about this important bill?

If this is a concern for them, I would like them to talk about this important food safety bill that affects all Canadians.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her question.

It is very important, because what we saw at XL Foods revealed a major lack of transparency. I felt like I was working in the dark because we kept asking questions, but we never got any answers. Where is the ministerial accountability of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food? I do not think he had any then.

We must protect whistleblowers at processing plants. The Conservatives justified their position by saying that this was not necessary since it already exists in the Criminal Code and that is enough. After seeing what we saw, we know that it is not enough. People felt very vulnerable. They were not comfortable saying that they saw a problem and that something needed to be done.

Whistleblower protection would help them. It would create a healthier, more transparent environment. That is exactly what we need when it comes to food safety: transparency and safety.

We must stand up for our workers with the proposed amendments.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, quite a few things come to mind. I am new to the agriculture file. I have been here for about seven months so I am learning a lot and visiting a lot of farms.

We have a lot of rules and regulations in Canada and I know our producers and farmers work hard to meet these standards. However, when something like this happens, it is sad because they have done everything. When there are problems at the meat transformation plant after they bring in their animals that really hurts the producers. It also hurts when we try to sell our meat abroad in other countries. This has a big domino effect. We need to focus on having a healthy environment.

I have worked in restaurants. I have been a manager and I know the responsibility to create a good workplace environment. We need to have trust and transparency, and we saw a lot of problems with that in the XL Foods fall-out recently.

We have a lot to do and this bill is a step in the right direction, but when we are going to do something why not do it right? This bill will pass no matter what, and I will vote for it, but why not add our amendments? Why not make it as full and as good as it can be? We should give it our all.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture for the question.

The lack of time was not the most important point in my speech. I talked about the 11 amendments proposed in committee.

However, this brings a question to mind. If we had had more time and had explained our amendments in greater detail, would you have voted in favour of them? Would you have agreed to one of our amendments if we had had more time? That is a good question.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, of course, I am going to support this bill, but once again, it does not go far enough.

This is a very important bill. It affects Canadians across the country because we eat every day. In Canada, one in eight jobs is related to agriculture. With regard to the markets, it is a multi-million dollar industry. We must therefore protect Canada's food safety system. Yes, this debate is important and the amendments that we proposed in committee were really good, but I was disappointed in the way that this took place. Yet, here we are today.

Bill S-11 is a first step in the right direction to improve and modernize the food safety system, and the NDP has been calling for the modernization of this legislation since Sheila Weatherill's report was published in 2009. However, Canadians need the government to invest more resources in the food safety system, rather than just streamlining the regulations. Although we support the content of this bill, we do not think that it goes far enough.

The witnesses who appeared before the Senate committee that conducted a more in-depth examination of this bill said that the bill would not have prevented the E. coli outbreak at the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta. Although the NDP believes that this bill is essential to improving Canada's food safety, we also believe that passing this bill without taking into account the amendments proposed by the opposition once again demonstrates the government's ill will. This is nothing new. We see it here almost everyday.

Every day, we represent our constituents here in Ottawa, and we are proud to do so. They are the ones who voted for us. We are here because of them. So, each day, I try to do my best to stand up for their interests. This seems only natural. However, I get the distinct impression that the members opposite often forget this basic principle. I will explain why.

Let me begin with a brief review of the facts. On October 17, the safe food for Canadians act, Bill S-11, was passed by the Senate. The purpose of this bill is to increase the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's resources and tools. At the beginning of the month, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food did a clause-by-clause review of the bill. As a member of that committee, I am very disappointed with this government's attitude toward this bill.

Today, the parliamentary secretary talked about this bill and all the good things that will come out of it, but it is the opposition MPs who keep talking. The parliamentary secretary was the only government representative to speak in favour of this bill. We have done our homework. All the witnesses who came to committee worked hard and shared their time and expertise with us. We worked very hard to propose constructive amendments, but, unfortunately, none of them were adopted. That is very disappointing, because the primary purpose of this bill is to ensure optimal food safety for all Canadians.

I would like to talk about some of the suggestions we made in committee. We thought it was important to add whistleblower protection measures that take into account the fact that the Criminal Code authorizes these types of measures. Allow me to begin by saying that other acts of Parliament explicitly present protection measures for whistleblowers that go beyond those in the Criminal Code, which is a good thing.

The purpose of this protection is to allow employees to come forward and feel secure—I repeat, feel secure—with this idea that they can tell inspectors things that they may not be able to see. In the case of XL Foods, we heard that this could have helped them.

During the latest tainted beef crisis, the largest beef recall in Canadian history, the workers said that they were aware of what was happening and knew that things were happening in a way that they did not believe was right, but because they felt vulnerable, they did not dare blow the whistle.

That is why we want whistleblower protection. I think we need to have a closer look at that. It is a standard model that can apply to many statutes that are enacted.

Accordingly, people can feel comfortable coming forward with a reasonable complaint, a complaint that has merit and that can be addressed in a way so that they do not feel their employment or their advancement is jeopardized, or any of the other things that people might feel vulnerable about.

We believe that in the case of XL Foods, such a measure would have limited the damage or perhaps even prevented the situation altogether.

That is the rationale for whistleblower protection.

I think this proposal made a lot of sense. It did not take anything away from the bill. On the contrary, it contributed something and enhanced the bill's effectiveness.

I really would have liked to see some openness on the part of the government, my Conservative colleagues. I like when we work together. I think it is important to do so here in the House. I would have liked us to work toward the same end: to improve a bill that is so important to food safety and consumer protection.

Year after year, on the Conservatives' watch, the number of food inspectors has decreased. Meanwhile, the food industry is more and more at risk.

At the committee stage, we proposed an amendment that called for an immediate audit as soon as the bill came into force. Clearly, food safety systems need to be reviewed regularly. We simply cannot allow another E. coli outbreak in the next five years. Unfortunately, the Conservative members of the committee voted against that amendment. It is really too bad, because in five years, we will have no basis for comparison. I think this is a waste of time.

If we do so now, if we create a basis and carry on, I think this will help us. This will be an improvement, not something that will harm the bill. The amendments we proposed made positive changes to the bill.

I would like to draw your attention to an excerpt from the testimony that Bob Kingston, national president of the Agriculture Union, gave before the Senate committee on October 2. I would like to point out that Mr. Kingston has 25 years of experience as an inspector and 15 years of experience as a supervisor, so he is someone who knows his stuff. He said:

I urge the committee to amend this bill to make such a review mandatory. I do note that an amendment has been put forward by the government, but it does not require a resource audit of the CFIA until five years after the bill becomes law. It is sort of like crossing your fingers and hoping nothing bad happens for five years. We already know that the CFIA has a problem; do not wait for another outbreak before addressing it.

We thus proposed several amendments to strengthen the bill. We never opposed this bill. Our sole objective was to strengthen and improve Bill S-11 by making clarifications and giving it more teeth.

We also asked for a mechanism related to stakeholders who represent the public interest on the arbitration board. We want to strike a balance between the interests of companies and the defence of public health.

It is a way for all voices to be represented and defended when it comes to food safety. Our amendment was rejected without any discussion, questions or explanation.

Another important amendment that we proposed asked that, on the coming into force of this section, the minister undertake an audit that includes an assessment of the resources allocated to the administration and enforcement of this act in order to get baseline information to be applied to reviews undertaken every five years. We need a basis for comparison right away, otherwise we will have to wait 10 years, which is a long time, before we can see the effects of these changes.

Bob Kingston also said:

If we are not careful, the successful enactment of Bill S-11, as well as the CFIA's new inspection modernization initiative, could fall victim to these pressures, as did the compliance verification system, or CVS, before them.

If you cast your memories back to the summer of 2008, just months before the Maple Leaf Foods outbreak, you will remember that the CFIA had just launched CVS. Without a serious pilot phase and before any lessons learned in development could be implemented, the agency had no idea how many inspectors were needed to do the job under CVS or what skills and training they might require.

That is what Sheila Weatherill recommended in her report on the 2008 listeriosis crisis, and that is what we asked for following the E. coli crisis. Unfortunately, we will have to continue asking because the Conservatives rejected that amendment.

Following the E. coli crisis this fall, members on both sides of the House knew that we would have to take action to ensure that this does not happen again. The Conservatives tried to make us believe that Bill S-11 was a solution. I have already said that I completely disagree. This bill does not go far enough and does not address a major problem at CFIA: the budget cuts that are forcing food inspectors to do their job with fewer resources.

When we discussed Bill S-11 at second reading stage, I informed my Conservative colleagues that we would move amendments in the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food. I had hoped that, in committee, with the evidence of expert witnesses and the time to concentrate on each clause, we could have a constructive, positive and honest discussion that would improve the bill. When I arrived here 18 months ago—time passes so quickly—I was somewhat naive. I believed that we would work together to improve things for Canadians. We were elected to protect the interests of Canadians, and I honestly believed that we would work together. That is not at all the case. It happens once in a while, but it all depends. On this file, it is not at all the case.

We moved a number of reasonable amendments that would have improved food safety in Canada, mainly by providing more clarity, preventing conflicts of interest, deterring companies' risky behaviour and providing more protection for CFIA workers and inspectors.

Since I have five minutes remaining, I will talk about the people who support our position, since there are many. The Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food dedicated three meetings to examining Bill S-11, and since we did not have enough time to bring in witnesses, I often had to refer to what happened in the Senate.

If Bill S-11 had first gone to the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-food, it would have been our pleasure to study it.

I will briefly explain what we want. But before I do that, I would like to say something about the crisis at XL Foods. We are not the ones who discovered the E. coli bacteria; it was the United States. It has mandatory testing that can detect the bacteria, which is not the case here in Canada.

Why does Canada not have that mandatory testing? I do not know, but that is something we are looking at.

I will now briefly explain what we want.

We want a comprehensive audit of the compliance verification system, as recommended by Sheila Weatherill.

We also want measures to adequately protect workers at meat processing plants who sound the alarm. We want to ensure that whistleblowers are protected.

We want to ensure that the CFIA has adequate resources and that it has the authority and independence it needs to do its job.

We want to strengthen the traceability requirements for meat, fish, fruit, vegetables—for all fresh foods.

We also want better and more transparent monitoring. During the E. coli crisis, there was a huge lack of transparency with respect to XL Foods, which was disappointing. We noted a lot of problems. In the House, we asked questions about XL Foods in order to understand what had happened, what would be done and what would be the future of the CFIA, but it was very hard to get answers. I think that transparency is very important, especially when it comes to food safety in Canada.

Although I did not talk about it, the question of labelling is also important. More and more, people want to know where their food comes from. They are increasingly curious about and interested in their food. Better oversight of labelling is therefore very important.

Those were our concerns.

Another person who agreed with our amendments was Neil Peacock, a member of the National Farmers Union board and a cattle producer from Sexsmith, Alberta. He remembers the 22 people who died and the 57 people who got sick during the listeriosis crisis in 2008 at Maple Leaf Foods. He wonders if the situation at XL Foods is not further proof that food safety and sovereignty in Canada are in danger.

I think there are lessons to be learned from all this. Yes, there were problems. Yes, perhaps some mistakes were made. However, I am thinking about the future, and Bill S-11, which I have right here, is a good bill if we bring in the amendments. We proposed 11 amendments, which I think are all good.

I am a little disappointed, but we will continue to think about the future.

[Safe Food for Canadians Act, November 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to work with the member for Guelph on the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.

Could he talk about the addition that would protect whistleblowers? Workers at XL Foods may have noticed problems at the plant but were afraid to voice their concerns. Could my colleague provide more information on that?