Mulcair's Environmental Record #2: Minister of Hog Development

Recently Morris W. Dorosh had a piece published in the Financial post:  Tom Mulcair’s incoherent farm policy.

In it he questions Mulcair's logic and math, when discussing agriculture and supply management.

Incoherence is the expected thing from Mulcair. His arithmetic seems a bit off. Supply management nationally provided 16.9 per cent of farm-gate cash revenue in 2014 and 17.0 per cent the prior year, so Mulcair must have been referring only to Quebec. In that case gross revenue from milk, egg and poultry sales in Quebec was 2.55 per cent of Canadian farm cash income. Employment allegedly created by the system can be almost any number depending on how creatively it is defined.

Conflicting views and just making stuff up when he can't answer a question, is actually a trademark of Mulcair's, and was long before he hijacked the NDP.

Environmentalist and water expert, Mario Desrosiers, said in 2005, after yet another deceit of Mulcair's when he tried to deny that he had fired the Environmental watchdog:

How can we give credibility to the words of a minister when his statements are different from one newspaper to another or from a television program to another or simply false.(1)  

Mulcair dismissed that and the hundreds of other concerns, by claiming that they "stem from emotional reactions" 

Since the media is content to go along with his view of his record as environment minister in Quebec, I'm running a series of articles, that reveal what actually occurred.  There was no principle, no commitment and certainly no logic.

Instead, what we see is a systematic attempt to privatize and deregulate, and just like Stephen Harper, much was done under the cloak of secrecy.  He, along with other members of the Quebec Liberal government, were actually sued, and part of the Plaintiffs' case dealt with the difficulty to access information.  (2)

The defence presented, was that they might expose things that shouldn't be exposed.  Not unlike the Harper government calling everything a "cabinet secret".  In one incident, Mulcair held off a group seeking an audience for a full year.

Mulcair's  Pig in a Poke

When in the Quebec government, Thomas Mulcair would often mention the fact that he helped to draft the terms of NAFTA.  In his promotion of bulk water sales, he suggested that  "the environmental laws protecting water are considered barriers to trade." (3)

Also a barrier to trade was a moratorium on hog farming, imposed by the Parti Quebecois, to keep the mega barn, multinational corporations, from over farming and contaminating the water supply.

When the pubic first became aware of Mulcair's intent to lift the moratorium, there was a great deal of opposition.  In 2003, he promised that a full environmental assessment would be done.  It was, concluding that the ban should not be repealed.  Mulcair lifted it anyway, favouring corporate interests over public safety.

"By authorizing new hog barns, the government is giving municipal officials and citizens a fait accompli. It is preparing for the worst crises than previous ones, since people feel cheated. The BAPE gave them hope and yet nothing changes, "says Gilles Tardif of the Citizen Coalition. 
"The Environment Minister Thomas Mulcair, seems to have turned into the minister of pig development," adds Tim Yeatman ... citizens have just elected candidates who campaigned against hog farms projects.  

 The groups are outraged that the government ignored the recommendations of the BAPE in regard to the protection of the environment and risks to the health of people drinking from artesian wells. "Despite clear evidence to the effect that the spreading of pig manure, slurry is not adequately controlled to prevent the pollution of watercourses, the Liberal government seems to be unconscious," says Martine Ouellet Vice President of the Coalition Eau Secours.  (4)

According to J. Knutson in Cultural Vision: A Memeplex for the Cultural Evolution

The major issue in Quebec is the ever-expanding hog industry, and its impact upon the environment and rural communities. In the fall of 2003 The Quebec government released its report on a public consultation process which recommended fundamental changes to hog production in order to make it sustainable in Quebec. A moratorium on hog production expansion followed, installed until new regulations and policies could be implemented, but was lifted prematurely in December 2004. Since then, grassroots community groups have been calling on the province to heed the Canadian Medical Association’s resolution to ban the expansion of the hog industry until the inherent risks of industrial hog farming are understood and the appropriate solutions. 

So while Thomas Mulcair is travelling the country, attacking Stephen Harper for not protecting our waterways, he himself clearly has no concern.  He will do just what Harper does.  Deregulate his way to more corporate profits.

In fact, one man actually had to go on a public hunger strike, lasting 18 days, just to get Mulcair to address a water pollution concern in his community.(5)

To honour NAFTA, he dishonoured the people he was supposed to protect, by not ensuring that they would enjoy a safe environment and clean drinking water.

The NDP are calling for change, but with Mulcair as prime minister, I'm afraid it would just be more of the same.

Sources:

1. Mulcair is Irresponsible and Insults People, By Mario Desrosiers , Chairman of the Citizens Committee Presquîle - Lanaudière (CCPL), October 11, 2005

2. CANADA, PROVINCE OF QUEBEC, DISTRICT MONTREAL, Citizens Committee of the peninsula-Lanaudière c. Quebec (Attorney General), 2006 QCCS 4861, SUPERIOR COURT; No: 500-17-023251-047, August 24, 2006

3. Mulcair is Pleased to Have a New Debate, The Press, Charles Cote and Mario Clouthier, June 16, 2004

4. End of moratorium on hog production, The Liberal government threatens the social climate in rural Quebec, Creek, December 12, 2005

5. Philipsburg cottager ends 18-day hunger strike Encouraged by minister's response to algae problem - by Debbie Parkes, The Gazette, August 14, 2003

Swindlers Revisited: Why Canada's Occupy Wall (Bay) Steet Movement is Important

A friend left a comment on my blog yesterday, reminding me of a book I had read several months ago, Swindlers.  She was just in the process of reading it herself.  Timely, given the current protests against Wall Street greed.

Anyone questioning why citizens have taken to the streets, need to read this book.

In it, the Rosens (father and son), tell us of how Jim Flaherty and Stephen Harper have signed Canada on to a new set of rules governing corporations.

Thanks to our self-regulated auditors, Canada will soon adopt [Came into effect on January 1, 2011]  new accounting and auditing standards called International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Under IFRS, corporate managers will have even more freedom to distort and manipulate their financial reports to make themselves look better than they really are. Despite the devastating impact it will have on investors and the utility of financial statements in general, auditors succeeded in pushing through the change because of complete disinterest from lawmakers and a lack of recognition by investors that auditors have no interest in upholding their needs. Canadians simply assume that a self-regulatory body like the auditors would look after public interests, not just their self-interests. (Swindlers: Cons and Cheats and How to Protect Your Investments From Them, By Al Rosen and Mark Rosen, Madison Commerce, 2010, ISBN: 978-1-897330-76-0)

They are now legally allowed to lie on their financial statements to lure potential investors.  When I wrote of this before, I received an email asking why it mattered.  After all, it was just rich people cheating other rich people.

However, this affects all of us, because it could mean company pension plans, RRSPs, mutual funds ... things we don't think about every day but they could have a serious affect on our future financial well being.  More from the book:

Judging from the stories that run in the newspaper, you probably think that Canada is a pretty safe place to invest your money. After all, we just survived one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression. Some of the biggest names in the world of banking and finance have disappeared, but not a single Canadian bank collapsed. Canada must be doing something right, right?

If you believe that, we have some bad news. The risks you take by investing in Canada have never been greater. And the so-called protection that Canadians think they receive from regulators, lawmakers, and auditors has never been weaker. (ibid)

Good PR (propaganda) at taxpayers expense, has led us to believe that we are financially sound.  We're not.  Since coming to office, the "Harper government" has been on a deregulation drunk.

During one binge, they flooded the market with sub-prime mortgages and the next day found themselves in bed with AIG.  Some morning after.

Another weekend of partying and they bailed out our banks to the tune of $125 billion.  The drunkenomic hangover.

More from the Rosens:

Corporate lobbying power and the absence of an organized investor voice in Canada means that most regulatory actions favour corporate interests. Canada is the only major country in the world that allows the same people who audit public companies to financially control the process that sets the auditing rules. This basic and fundamental conflict of interest means that auditors can set rules that cater to their paying corporate clients over the needs of investors.

There's a lot of money involved in these financial cons. Based on our extensive experience with auditor negligence and executive dishonesty, we estimate that investors have lost hundreds of billions of dollars to scams in Canadian financial markets. Even if you haven't invested a penny in the stock market yourself, these losses affect you. Anyone who collects a pension, saves for his children's education, or simply pays her taxes like an honest citizen suffers from the disinterest of our regulators and lawmakers in prosecuting dishonest corporate executives, aided by acquiescent auditors.

If power is intoxicating, unchecked power is inebriating. 

A few more brown-bagged calamities:

A former Goldman-Sachs employee is running the bank of Canada and has brought along a colleague to act as his assistant.  The same Goldman-Sachs who helped to create the last economic crisis, and the same Goldman-Sachs who warned their clients not to invest in Canada.

Another Goldman-Sachs employee has been signed on to handle Canada's foray into derivatives.  Investor Warren buffet calls derivatives "weapons of mass destruction", but that won't stop Flaherty.  He's even putting some of our Canada pension funds into this risky venture.

Stephen Harper's chief of staff came right off Bay Street to secure the purchase of the F-35s for one of his clients.

And yet Flaherty claims that Canadians have little to protest.

Chantel Hebert is suggesting that instead of protesting Canadians should vote.  Maybe if the media kept us better informed, we would.  Every time they refer to this government as "Tories", they are putting another nail in our coffin.

A Queens University political science professor was asked recently why people are protesting.  She said that the question should not be "why?" but what took them so long.

Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs: The "Cooling Off" period

This is the next in my series on Jim Flaherty's Canadian financial crisis, and how we got there. Since it's not registering that Canada had a massive bank bailout and we are now the proud owners of $125 billion worth of rotten paper, I went back to the beginning, so you can see how we got here from there.

Stephen Harper has always supported bank deregulation and often chided the Liberal government for being too cautious. It's a good thing they were. As Trish Hennessey says in her piece: The Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System

Canada’s economy was shel­tered from the worst of the 2008 global economic meltdown because our bank regulations are tougher than they are in competing jurisdictions like the U.S. Fol­lowing our own high standards paid off, and protected Canadians from the eco­nomic devastation that brought entire nations such as Iceland and the U.S. to the brink of ruin.

Yet our federal government continues to quietly deregulate Canada. Our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is warn­ing against strong regulatory practices. In a speech to the G20 in January 20102, Harper warned other nations against ‘ex­cessive’ financial regulations — a coun­terintuitive message, given strong regulations saved Canadians from the economic devastation our American counterparts are experiencing today.

Given that deregulation in the United States paved the way for Goldman Sachs to almost destroy the global economy, we might want to ask why our finance minister has made a Goldman Sachs employee, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who has become a cheerleader for Harper's policies.

And he's brought along another Goldman Sachs employee to act as an advisor. We simply aren't tearing down our safety net fast enough. And this new Goldman Sachs employee, Timothy Hodgson, will be handling derivatives, like the ones that help to bring on the economic crisis?

Matt Taibbi wrote for the Rolling Stone, a piece called, Wall Street's Bailout Hustle, as he reveals the con game played by Wall Street and Goldman Sachs. He calls the current period the "Cool off", which in the grifter world is the calming down period. Get your mark to trust you again.

But given that Wall Street, bailed out by the taxpayer, is again engaging in reckless behaviour, he believes that we are heading toward another meltdown.

The bottom line is that banks like Goldman have learned absolutely nothing from the global economic meltdown. In fact, they're back conniving and playing speculative long shots in force — only this time with the full financial support of the U.S. government. In the process, they're rapidly re-creating the conditions for another crash, with the same actors once again playing the same crazy games of financial chicken with the same toxic assets as before. (2)

Only this time Canada's safety net is full of big gaping holes and Wall Street has paved it's way to Parliament Hill.

Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty and Their Cooling Off Period

The first "cool off" for Steve and Jim came in the fall of 2008, when they announced with much fanfare that they were closing the door on 40-year, no down payment mortgages. What they didn't mention was that the only reason Canada had mortgages like that was because Steve and Jim allowed AIG, Goldman Sachs and other American gamblers to bring them to Canada.

But economists and bankers were sounding the alarm, sending letter after letter to the federal finance department, asking them to quit. But it was only after news began spreading over the sub-prime meltdown south of the border, that these two decided they'd better cool it for a bit.

AIG didn't lose a dime, because Flaherty had already put up $200 billion Canadian tax dollars to make sure they didn't. But CMHC cried foul, our banks just cried, and Jimbo came to the rescue, buying the junk back so they could get them off the books before the mainstream media caught on. Too late though.

The cat was out of the bag.

So Steve and Jim went public, with "we're going to put a stop to this" and most in the media hailed them as heroes. Kinda like a bank robbery when one criminal helps to apprehend the others but still manages to make off with the dough.

And when they bought this junk back they tried to say it wasn't a "bank bailout", but that was, well ... a lie:

Harper called the recent CMHC deal "simply a market intervention ... to ensure our credit markets are functioning strongly." But Grinspun [York University political economist Ricardo] dismisses that interpretation: "Taxpayers are assuming risky assets and giving away safe ones." The problem, says Grinspun, is Harper and Flaherty haven't addressed the issues that exacerbated the crisis, including lack of transparency, greater deregulation and a philosophy the markets know best. (3)

A few people made a lot of money off our mini housing boom, and the only ones left with nothing but garbage, were the Canadian taxpayers. And can we withstand another meltdown with this toxic debt still on our books?

The new "cool off" of calming down the marks (us) is being helped along with millions of tax dollars going to sell us on the myth that this government piloted us through the recession. Unfortunately the ship is the Titanic and the iceberg may be just up ahead.

Previous:

1. It's Time to Have a Serious Conversation About Jim Flaherty and Goldman Sachs

2. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and the Foxes in the Henhouse

3. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and "The Swoop and Squat"

4. Jim Flaherty, Goldman Sachs and AIG Comes Calling

Sources:

1. Disaster in the Making: The Quiet Erosion of Canada’s Regulation System, By Trish Hennessy, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, February 22, 2011

2. Wall Street's Bailout Hustle, By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, February 17, 2010

3. Deficit not 'dirty' word experts warn Tories, By Linda Liebel, Toronto Star, October 27, 2008

Conservative Deregulation Resulted in Listeriosis Deaths

While Agriculture and Agri-Food minister Gerry Ritz may have found the listeriosis outbreak something to joke about, the families of the victims did not; especially since the tragedy could have been avoided.

Like George Bush, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives believe in privatization and deregulation, and the decisions made by the government four months prior to the outbreak, resulted in one of the worst health crisis in modern times.

On April 1, 2008; fittingly 'April Fools' day, meat-processing companies were no longer required to alert Canada's food safety agency about listeria-tainted meat.

Instead, the Conservative government, now allowed companies to write their own food safety plans, and as a result, 20 Canadian families lost loved ones.

This is reminiscent of the Mike Harris Conservative government in Ontario, that drastically reduced the number of inspectors, resulting in seven deaths in Walkerton, from e-coli.

Listeria reporting rule dropped before crisis

Meat plants not required to tell food inspectors when bacteria found
Toronto Star

October 06, 2008

Robert Cribb Staff Reporter

Four months before the Maple Leaf outbreak started claiming lives, Canada's food safety agency quietly dropped its rule requiring meat-processing companies to alert the agency about listeria-tainted meat, a Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found.

Twenty people died as a result of the outbreak this past summer, and federal meat inspectors and their union say this rule change likely made the country's listeria outbreak far worse than it had to be.

Before April 1, if a company preparing meat for sale to the public had a positive test showing listeria it "would have had to have been, not only brought to the (federal) inspector's attention, but the inspector would have been involved in overseeing the cleanup," says Bob Kingston, head of the union that represents Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors.

Kingston and four veteran inspectors interviewed for this story fear the change, part of the deregulation of Canada's food safety net, continues to pose a public health threat.

The inspection agency confirmed to the Star/CBC that there is currently no onus on companies to alert inspectors about positive bacterial results. The change came as part of a federal decision to allow companies to write their own food safety plans, with federal approval.

Neither Maple Leaf nor the safety agency will release to the public the specifics of the listeria outbreak at the plant, located on Bartor Rd. near Sheppard Ave. W. and Highway 400, so it is not possible to determine how the reporting rule would have affected the case.

The first of the 20 deaths attributable to the listeriosis outbreak happened in July, officials have said.

One Toronto inspector said there had been a "trend" in positive listeria tests leading up to the outbreak that was never reported by the plant to federal inspectors. The inspector, and three others across the country, spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear disciplinary action if they spoke publicly. "There's something wrong, that an inspector isn't aware of a trend in their own plant," the inspector said.

Inspectors and their union say the rule changes, part of the new Compliance Verification System at the safety agency, have reduced their role to paper auditors, checking the results of company tests when they visit the plant. Under current rules, the inspectors only review bacterial test results twice a month.

Maple Leaf spokesperson Linda Smith said her company makes all of its paperwork and testing available to inspectors but doesn't alert them to positive test results.

"As per the regulations, there is no requirement to inform the CFIA about any listeria test result," she said. "The protocol Maple Leaf had in place was if they found a positive, they would sanitize the area and then you'd need to find three negatives in a row to leave that area alone. In (the Maple Leaf plant from which the outbreak was traced), there were occasional positives. ... They would sanitize and test three subsequent times and in all of those cases, they did not find another positive in that area."

During the outbreak, Maple Leaf president Michael McCain said the company tests the Toronto plant's surfaces 3,000 times a year.

"Positive results for listeria inside a food plant are common," he told reporters at the time, adding that "there was nothing out of the norm" leading up to the outbreak.

Asked for the listeria test results leading up to the outbreak, Smith said last week the company would not release them publicly.

At the union representing federal inspectors, national president Kingston said he has been pushing to have the reporting rule reinstated for the past month.

If inspectors had known about the positive listeria tests, "the CFIA would have been doing their own testing to validate the success of the cleanup," Kingston said, adding after April 1, no rules required inspectors be told of any cleanup activities or repeated positives.

A Toronto-area inspector said that if Maple Leaf had been required to report the listeria test results, alarms would have gone off at the federal food safety agency.

"Bells and whistles would have been sounding if (Maple Leaf officials) had to report positive test findings to an inspector."

"We're seeing (20) people dead. We might not have had anybody dead (if company officials were still obligated to report positive listeria findings). ... It's terrible. My dad eats this stuff all the time. I eat it," the inspector said.

A veteran inspector in the Vancouver area said the safety agency needs to go back to being more hands-on in plants. "(The new system) isn't working. Let's go back to basics, get the inspector back in the plant, spending more time there."

Dr. Vinita Dubey, Toronto's associate medical officer of health, said the reporting change is "absolutely a concern. This may be a perfect example of how self-regulation may not be appropriate."

In the aftermath of the outbreak, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz publicly defended the new inspection regime, saying about 50 per cent of an inspector's time is on the floor of plants and "the other 50 per cent is overseeing paperwork, most of it scientific in nature, test results and the like."

Not so, say inspectors, estimating their time on plant floors is down to between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of their day. "We shouldn't be called inspectors anymore," says one inspector in Vancouver. "We should be called auditors. I think the public wants inspectors on the floor, sleeves rolled up."

Another Toronto inspector says she and her colleagues used to be aware of everything happening in a plant. "Things have changed now. We're more the oversight and they run their own show. The problem ... is, it can all look good on paper, but you've got to be out there to see what's going on."

One inspector was startled to find no reference to mandatory reporting in the safety plans of plants he inspects. "There's nowhere in (the new system) that tells them they have to inform you of a high bacterial load."

That lost oversight, he says, had to play a role in the outbreak.

"I think it would have prevented a preventable situation like the listeria (outbreak). It has alarmed me and it's disappointing. It's a travesty for the department and a shakeup the CFIA needs to get grassroots feedback about what works and what doesn't. (This) isn't working."

But the agency's Graham said the system still protects the public. "Are we missing things? It's unfortunate what's happened here with the outbreak. There's no doubt about that. None of us are happy about that. But is our system a good system? Yes, it is."

Oh, it's a wonderful system. I'm sure 20 Canadian families might disagree though.