Health committee  I believe it was before that.

Health committee  The situation now is that Cargill is back to production. I believe they're back to full line speeds again. They're monitoring things very closely and we're not hearing that there's another outbreak, or there aren't a lot of new positive cases of COVID-19. That could be for a numb

Health committee  I have heard that's something that CFIA is looking into. To be quite honest, I'm skeptical, because our inspectors actually can stop the line when the carcass is going by. If they see an anomaly, they can manipulate the carcass to look closely. It's going to be interesting to se

Health committee  Right now, no, there have been no disciplinary measures. We've only had two official cases of what's called the right to refuse under the Canada Labour Code, because our members fall under federal jurisdictions. Those right to refuse cases were resolved at the local level, and th

Health committee  That statement came from a supervisor who said, not that there were no issues, but that the plant had put in a process in order to protect workers at the Cargill plant to mitigate the hazards. They were going to implement social distancing, they were putting plexiglass barriers b

Health committee  Yes. In my opinion, when you do a hazard assessment, you determine how you're going to protect somebody from a hazard. If you can't eliminate the hazard or reduce it to the lowest possible level, you put in measures such as social distancing. When they don't work, you then have t

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  I just want to qualify that I'm not an inspector. I came from the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, where I was a health and safety adviser. Many of my members of the Agriculture Union are inspectors. I talk to them every day and I visited these plants myself. What we've

Health committee  That's a very good question, and obviously when you mass-produce anything, the producers can usually lower their costs. I agree with you 100% that sometimes the quality from the smaller producers is better. I think buying locally is very important, especially after COVID-19. Ho

Health committee  They were not specific to one facility. There were positive tests in Quebec, Alberta and Ontario, but the majority of them were in Alberta: 18 inspectors in the Cargill plant tested positive.

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  To nail down a date would be difficult.

Health committee  It was over a month, a month and a half even, before the protections were put in place. I attribute some of that to confusion in the Public Health Agency, because at the beginning, our members were told they should not and could not wear face coverings, even though some of those

Health committee  [Inaudible—Editor]

Health committee  We haven't had a response on our plan, on our requests, and our suggestions. I know that the government and the agency are working very hard to procure more personal protective equipment—surgical face masks, N95s—and to put measures in place, but we haven't had a discussion with