In 2007 when Stephen Harper met with George Bush and Mexican President Calderon in Montibello, they adopted a new strategy for food inspection.
It was something called 'risk management', which meant instead of government officials doing food inspection, the food processing industry would be allowed to inspect themselves.
However, if something went wrong, they must bear the brunt of it. (Hence, the Maple Leaf ads, that gave the appearance of a company that cared. In fact these ads were a mandatory part of the new agreement.)
There was a great deal of outrage when agricultural minister Gerry Ritz treated the listeriosis outbreak as a joke, but Harper himself wisecracked when asked about this horrendous new deal for Canada. With a smirk, he quipped 'Is our food sovereignty going to be compromised by standardizing jellybeans?'
He knew exactly what this meant and so did Ritz, who was a fellow member of the National Citizens Coalition and long time opponent of the Canada Wheat Board. In fact he was made minister of agriculture to use his influence to scrap the CWB, but so far it hasn't worked.
I'm doing something a little different with my blog, trying to organize archives, etc. so I'm using this page to link my stories on Gerry Ritz.
Feel free to use anything.
We've got to start preparing ourselves for the next election, by reminding Canadians that Stephen Harper is not the only problem this party has. They are the wrong fit for Canada and really must be put out to pasture, before they completely destroy this country.
Living in Kingston, the prison capital of Canada; I am fully aware that those who commit crimes are incarcerated. However, rehabilitation is also a necessary part of dealing with criminals, because most will eventually get out and be released into the community.
The Reformer's new so-called "tough on crime" legislation is a recipe for disaster and their plan to close the prison farms, sheer insanity. They consulted no one before making that decision. They even refuse to show the figures that supposedly reveal that the farms are a drain on the economy, calling them a "cabinet secret". What isn't a secret with this government?
Crime in Canada is on the decrease, and in fact is now the lowest it has been in almost three decades. So why the need to end rehabilitation and put billions of dollars of our money into super prisons, which merely warehouse individuals?
I attended a local meeting last week, with Representatives of the Aboriginal justice committee, the John Howard Society, the Agricultural Union and Liberal MP Mark Holland. Peter Van Loan was invited to attend, but declined; and our local Reform candidate Brain Abrams sent an email stating that he was in favour of the prison farms remaining open.
But as I pointed out that night, it doesn't matter what Brian Abrams believes. If Kingstonians were stupid enough to elect him, he will be a Harper flunky, and will tow the party line like the rest of them. I suggested that next election campaign, we adopt a slogan "No farms, no Brian", and that doesn't simply mean not voting for him, but not allowing him to even campaign. We will drown out his speeches, wear T-shirts and carry signs. If he comes to our door we tell him "No farms, no Brian", and to get the hell off our property.
We won't let up until Van Loan guarantees that the farms will not be closed, and if that happens before the next election, it will be too late for Abrams, I'm afraid. He will represent everything that is narrow minded and evil about the party he plans to run for. They may have to find him another riding to represent. I have made that my personal mission and am already designing flyers.
Globe essay Cultivating convicts Considering their effect on prisoners, it would be folly to close down Canada's prison farms Lawrence Scanlan December 07, 2009
Stroke a cat. Pet a dog. Groom a horse. Observe any creature, even fish swimming in a tank.
These activities have one thing in common: They all lower blood pressure, relax us and make us feel better about being alive. We are hard-wired to connect with our fellow creatures, and pet owners in this country – who spend $4-billion a year on their animal companions – know it.
The animals tended by prisoners in the barns at Frontenac Institution in Kingston do not rank high on the chosen list of animal companions. I am speaking of cows and chickens.
A funny thing about chickens. Susan Orlean's recent piece in The New Yorker (“The It Bird: The Return of the Back-yard Chicken”) must have struck a chord with a producer at TV Ontario, for there she was on Oct. 12 being interviewed by Steve Paikin on his current-affairs program, The Agenda . Ms. Orlean notes that city-dwellers all over North America are going back to what used to be the norm before the 1950s. Raising chickens, she says, is “a declaration of self-sufficiency, a celebration of handwork and a push-back from a numbing and disconnected big-box life.”
When I lived in the country, we had chickens. I found it soothing to watch them scratch in the dirt; Ms. Orlean likewise. I liked collecting still warm eggs, liked seeing chicks peeping and huddled under a heat lamp in the spring and hated the task of slaughtering the oversized meat birds a few months later. For me, chickens led to ducks, a cat, dogs, a horse. I live in the city now, but I was stamped by my experience nurturing animals.
Some federal inmates know the feeling. There are six prison farms across Canada – at Bowden in Alberta, at Riverbend in Saskatchewan, at Rockwood in Manitoba, at Westmorland in New Brunswick, and two in Kingston (Frontenac and Pittsburgh Institutions).
The Harper government plans to close them all by 2011.
No city in Canada has the prison population we do in Kingston, and it's here that the response to the proposed closing of prison farms has been most vigorous. A debate held at St. Lawrence College last March drew about 250 people and letters to the editor of local newspapers continue to decry the move.
The National Farmers' Union, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Public Service Alliance, the Council of Canadians and the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul all protest the closing of prison farms. A national coalition of objectors, Save Our Farms, has formed to continue the battle. On the SOF website is a letter from an inmate at Riverbend who declares, “The farm has saved my life.”
NOT EASILY CAPTURED ON LEDGERS
Volunteering with the John Howard Society in the summer of 2008 as part of my research for a book, I got a taste of both Frontenac and the prison next to it, Collins Bay Institution. I remember being inside the latter's hot and high-walled yard devoid of any living thing, and the crackling tension that pervaded the medium-security jail.
Frontenac, on the other hand, is minimum-security. I didn't actually get to the barns, but I remember staring out over rolling green fields – right in the middle of the city. Frontenac may well be the largest urban farm in Canada and it represents some inmates' last stop before walking out the prison gates.
The Harper government wants to close prison farms for several stated reasons. One is that few inmates who work in the farm program actually go on to farm, once released.
Well, of course. An ex-convict needs capital to buy land and farm machinery, and where is he to find that? A prisoner who has worked on the land and with animals leaves jail with something not easily captured on ledgers, something that most prisons are hard pressed to provide: the beginnings of groundedness and a sense of peace, perhaps even a feeling of a job well done.
Wayne Easter, a long-time farmer and a former solicitor-general who was in charge of our prisons, was on CBC Radio's The Current on Oct. 6 as part of a panel to discuss the closing of prison farms. He counters the government's contention that these operations are a $4-million annual drain on the system. (The figure is from Corrections Canada, which refuses to divulge the accounting.) Mr. Easter noted that since the food produced by those same farms is worth almost $3-million a year (another government figure), the savings are slim.
But duelling numbers are a mug's game that misses the real point of prison farms. Mr. Easter told me he visited the farm at Frontenac as recently as October and he left impressed with the inmates' sense of pride in their work (one with welding skills had ingeniously cobbled together a cow lift) and genuine affection for the animals in their care. “Their eyes light up and their chests stick out when they talk about the animals,” he said. “It's not like these men are building furniture. They're dealing with living creatures.”
Using nature to heal damaged souls is an old remedy. The Quakers who started York Retreat in England in the late 18th century were appalled by the punitive and callous treatment of the mentally ill. The Quaker response was to have asylum inmates work on a farm growing plants and tending animals. The lessons learned are simple and timeless: Nurture a living thing and it grows, neglect it and it dies.
And the beauty of plants and animals is that they are free of all prejudice – they reward the nurturer and care not that he has a record as long as his blue-tattooed arm. (For more on the exhaustively researched impact of animals on prison populations, nursing homes, schools and hospitals, consult the website of the Canadian Foundation for Animal-Assisted Support Services.)
CONNECTION WITH PRIMAL ELEMENTS
Inmates at Frontenac Institution don't have to work on the farm, but the ones who choose to do so rise between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. Inmates resent all the dead time in prison: waiting for gates to open, for programs to commence, for the institution's schedule to unfold.
On “the farm camp,” as they call it, there is no dead time. As any farmer will tell you, the work is both endless and endlessly rewarding. Up to 110 inmate farmers at Frontenac learn about punctuality, self-reliance, safety around large animals, the operation of heavy machinery, the work ethic, crop management, animal husbandry and a great deal else.
The 130 milking cows at Frontenac are from prizewinning genetic lines that date back to 1942, producing more than 4,000 litres of milk a day. Both milk and eggs feed prisoners in Ontario and Quebec, with a huge allotment of eggs also going to a Kingston food bank each year. With its on-site abattoir, this whole prisoners-feeding-prisoners enterprise strikes all the right economic and environmental notes.
What galls those who want prison farms to continue and even expand is that the government seems bent on paving the land (grade-1 agricultural land) and building new cell blocks, even super-jails. Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, is puzzled by the move. “It's now on the record,” he says, “that they are going to use that land to build prisons or expand the current infrastructure, which makes sense because they already own and control the land. But it seems a strange time to build prisons when crime rates are in decline all across the OECD, including Canada and the U.S.”
John Edmunds, the national president of non-correctional staff in prisons, who also works at Frontenac Institution, says, “We have something wonderful operating right here, and we don't understand why they want to close it. It's one of the worst decisions they have ever made.”
Andrew McCann, who teaches a course at St. Lawrence College in Kingston on sustainable agriculture, remarks on the peaceful environment on the Frontenac farm. Inmates work with local farmers and get something else they don't get back inside: respect. The employer-employee dynamic in the barns is a far cry from the guard-con dynamic on the cell blocks.
There is no violence in the barns, and no anger – not least because handling a cow roughly risks a powerful kick. One farmer told Mr. McCann that he understands why Frontenac's unique chemistry works on even hardened convicts. “The cows are all mothers,” he observes.
Farming can soften the blows of incarceration, lets confined men breathe again and connects them with primal elements: the soil and the seasonal round, the birth and death of creatures that offer milk, meat and eggs. It's all so plain to see.
Eventually, the vast majority of prisoners get out. Will at least some of them emerge with a new-found sense of compassion, or will most be seething with rage? Blacktopping the 800 acres at Frontenac or the 1,200 acres at Pittsburgh to create factory prisons is wrong, just as closing the other prison farms in Canada is wrong, and for all kinds of reasons. One of them is that we on the outside would all be less safe, not more so.
(Lawrence Scanlan lives in Kingston. His book A Year of Living Generously: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Philanthropy will be published in the spring.)
In part one of the documentary The Nation's Deathbed, we witness political activism against the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), with the battle cry "People united will never be defeated." A powerful message but is the message falling on deaf ears? Latest polls certainly would indicate that, though polls outside of an election are rarely indicative of future election results.
In 2005, the new Reform-Conservative Party was at 23% and Stephen Harper's leadership at 14%, and we all know how that turned out.
But another important part of this segment, is the new Canadian standards. At one time a CSA label on a product, really meant something. It may have hindered the ability of our trading partners to market goods here, but we didn't care. Part of our sovereignty was about the safety of Canadians.
However, there has been an erosion of those standards, and in 2007, when Harper met with then U.S. President Bush and Mexican President Calderon in Montibello, a deal was struck that pretty much eliminated government standards on goods from these two countries. Many believe that H1N1 is a direct result of that and in fact some have dubbed it the 'NAFTA Flu'.
We saw evidence of these new product safety standards with the Listeriosis outbreak, which actually provides an excellent example of how the new agreement works.
Instead of government officials doing food inspection, the move is toward allowing food processors (and indeed all industry) to inspect themselves. Then when something goes wrong, which it inevitably does, a scheme they call 'Risk Management' takes over. According to the Council of Canadians:
"At the heart of both systems is a reliance on industry reporting and monitoring, rather than independent government testing, and an emphasis on cleaning up the mess (to the environment or human lives) caused by bad products after the fact. They call this “risk management,” an about-face from the “precautionary principle” of better safe than sorry."
Under the RM plan, industry can police themselves but if something goes wrong, they will bear the brunt of it. Hence the Maple Leaf ads, that gave the appearance of a company that cared. In fact these ads were a mandatory part of the new agreement.
And before we think that taxpayers will benefit from not having to pay public servants to act as food police, remember that 22 people died from that tainted meat. And how many more outbreaks are there in the works, from listeriosis or some other contaminant? What will the death toll be then? There is a reason to have these controls and to have these inspections.
Listeriosis Timeline and Why a 'Risk Management' Scenario is Wrong:
3. Before the Listeriosis outbreak became public, a biologist working for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, blew the whistle on the cutbacks that were removing food inspections from government responsibility, and turning them over to the industry itself. He was fired.
4. News of the outbreak of Listeriosis from tainted meat hits, and in a conference call Gerry Ritz, the minister in charge of food safety, finds it all rather amusing.
5. A year after the outbreak the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is stating that they are not being given the resources to do their job (sound familiar?) and threaten that another outbreak is likely.
6. We were warned that this type of 'privatization' was just the beginning: "The listeriosis outbreak that has killed 20 Canadians could be "the tip of the iceberg" both in terms of food safety dangers and risks from other federal cutbacks, according to Agriculture Union President and food inspector Bob Kingston."
7. Harper sets up a bogus panel to investigate the situation, but stacked the team with his own staff.
9. The final report makes the recommendation that they hire an independent auditor to ensure outbreaks like this are prevented. Ritz gives the job to his own assistant, which effectively means that they inspect themselves, and it is business as usual. Underfunded agency and the industry still inspects itself.
Now before you think that Gerry Ritz's callousness was unique, it is not. In order for the neo-conservative movement to be successful, you have to remove the human element. The Queen of the neo-cons, Margaret Thatcher, once said: "There is no such thing as society."
Another neo-con guru, Roger Douglas, told his disciples "Don't blink".
The SPP has actually disbanded, but not the principles. They have just been rolled into a juiced up NAFTA, and the fight continues.
Murray Dobbin believes we still have a chance to turn this movement around, but we must first get people to pay attention, and above all VOTE. I can't stress that enough. Apathy is probably more dangerous than the SPP.
When the Listeriosis crisis that killed 22 Canadians, hit during the last election campaign; Harper's concern was not those deaths, but damage control. Not just damage control because he had all but abolished government inspections of the food industry, but because his minister, Gerry Ritz, thought the whole thing was a joke.
As Bob Fife continues to point out, the comments made by the minister responsible for food safety, should have got him fired. But in Harper's world it just raised his creds. Only the whistleblower lost his job.
We can also see that Duffy himself was trying to move the conversation away from the seriousness of Listeriosis, to the seriousness of political fallout. Mr. Fife was understandably shocked.
And the Harper government's handling of this horrible situation, should be just as shocking.
OTTAWA — The federal government has appointed the top bureaucrat at Agriculture Canada to lead Ottawa's overhaul of food safety after an investigation into last year's deadly listeriosis outbreak called for an independent expert to direct the effort.
Sheila Weatherill zeroed in on a "vacuum in senior leadership" among government officials during her sweeping independent investigation earlier this year into the outbreak that cost 22 Canadians their lives.
And in her final report presented to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz in July, Weatherill called on the clerk of the privy council, the bureaucratic wing of the Prime Minister's Office, to appoint an "independent expert" to lead a review involving top bureaucrats at Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to sort out the roles of federal departments and agencies in food safety.
The clerk, Wayne Wouters, has tapped the bureaucratic right-hand of Ritz, John Knubley, to lead the special committee of deputy ministers, said a spokeswoman for the clerk, declining further comment.
Ritz, who is responsible for CFIA and whose president reports directly to him, took the government lead during last year's listeriosis outbreak and promised to implement every recommendation put forward by Weatherill.
In a statement, Ritz said his deputy minister of agriculture is an independent expert on the file, so the appointment means the "recommendation has been fulfilled."
"Privy Council's naming of Deputy Minister John Knubley ensures he is able to independently provide expert analysis that will be reported directly to the Clerk," Ritz said in a statement.
University of Manitoba microbiologist Rick Holley, a member of CFIA's academic advisory panel on food safety, said this is a stretch.
"The perception I think in most circles would be that appointment doesn't give the independence that was intended in the original recommendation by Sheila Weatherill. That's my suspicion here. My preference would be another choice be made."
Holley said the appointment "wouldn't have to be outside" government, but it shouldn't come from within the agriculture ministry, which is tasked with devising policies and programs to achieve security of the food system and whose minister held daily briefings about the government response during the outbreak.
"My preference would actually be to see an appointment from the Auditor General's office. They would not be a party to any of the baggage that currently exists and the difficulties associated between the public health and the food regulatory interface, which in and of itself is a singular problem that needs resolution."
Weatherill also recommended that CFIA, "supported by independent experts," initiate a comprehensive review of the agency's organizational structure and decision-making processes. The public health agency should do the same, Weatherill recommended.
Neither agency responded Thursday to clarify whether the independent experts appointed in these cases are external to government or external to the agency.
Gerry Ritz making jokes about Listeriosis. Lisa Raitt thinking Cancer is Sexy. Apparently John Baird led the chorus of hecklers. I don't know. They are on such a media high, that they feel invincible, and no longer have to even pretend to care. Very sad.
During the Parliamentary crisis, National Post columnist, Kelly McParland, went so far as to suggest that there was a left-wing conspiracy out to get Harper. (Kelly McParland: The vast left-wing conspiracy that ensnared Stephen Harper)
"Mr. Harper's stated belief that the NDP and Bloc Quebecois were conspiring against him well before his plan to end public funding for political parties blew up in his face. I thought there would be headlines the next day: “Harper accuses opposition of conspiracy.” But not a word..." (Maybe because others not playing footsie with the Conservatives were aware of the hypocrisy)
Either McParland was deliberately trying to spin the coalition or he's been living under a rock.
In 2004, Stephen Harper did the exact same thing, meeting with opposition members before Parliament even opened. Was that a right-wing conspiracy? Hardly, since we now only have one right-wing option, representing roughly 1/3 of the population. Sadly, because of people like McParland and his ilk, that 1/3 dictates what happens to the remaining 2/3, who aren't narrow minded bigots and care about the direction this country is headed.
More recently, we've seen the media gloss over the possibility of another listeriosis outbreak, and a government once again abusing their powers rather than taking responsibility for their actions.
The media is treating it like a little spat, rather than actually doing their jobs and at least pretending to be journalists who want to keep Canadians informed.
Liberals and Conservatives are accusing each other of playing politics over the listeriosis outbreak one year ago that resulted in 22 deaths. Opposition MPs on a Commons committee had hoped to hear Wednesday from Dr. Sheila Weatherill, who investigated the outbreak and issued a report to Parliament containing a number of recommendations to prevent a similar occurrence.
Instead, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food adopted a motion commending Weatherill's work and declaring that no further investigations are needed into the outbreak that was linked to a Maple Leaf Foods plant.
"Ms. Weatherill's in-depth examination has provided Canadians with a complete and comprehensive review of the events of last summer and recommendations that will improve Canada's food safety system," the motion read.
"Due to this extensive review, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food is of the view that no public inquiry is necessary."
But the Liberal Opposition accused the Conservatives of using political tricks to silence Weatherill, saying the Tories voted in favour of the motion to maintain a "veil of secrecy" over the government's handling of last summer's crisis.
"We came prepared to ask Sheila Weatherill questions about her report and find out if the government has made any progress in improving the food safety system," said Liberal agriculture critic Wayne Easter.
"They'd rather show their secretive side than be open and get down to fixing the problem."
Ritz doesn't appear The Opposition also wanted to hear from Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. But a spokeswoman for the minister told The Canadian Press that Ritz had other commitments. "[Minister Ritz] could not make the schedule work to fit the opposition's political games at the last minute," Meagan Murdoch wrote in an email. The political wrangling over last year's outbreak came on the same day as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning about deli meats from a Quebec food processing plant that may contain listeria monocytogenes.
The warning involved Compliments-brand smoked beef eye of round pastrami and roast beef from Delstar Foods Inc. of Montreal. The warning also applied to Delstar-brand smoked beef eye of round and pastrami smoked beef round club packs.
The meat might look and smell safe, but could still cause listeriosis, the CFIA said in its online Health Hazard Alert.
The recalled deli meats were distributed only in Quebec and there were no reports of illness associated with the products.
So why wasn't the headline "Canadian Food Inspection Agency fears another outbreak of listeriosis, and not dismissed as a spat?" Hope the media are all vegetarians or their own nonsense could make THEM sick, and not just me.
They dream about it, they lust after it, but maybe it's time they just gave up.
It might impede the American Corporations backing their campaigns against this Canadian institution, but it's time they thought about the small prairie farmers, and what the wheat board does for them.
If it ain't broke, don't rewrite the Grain Act Alternate ways to regulate buyers would cost more. There's an old joke about a farmer who is granted just one wish from the magical genie.
After thinking about it for a bit, the farmer tells the genie he wants a good crop and high prices to happen in the same year. Usually, farmers either get high prices and a poor crop, or a poor crop and high prices.
The genie grants his wish. He returns a few days later to find his farmer sitting on a stockpile of grain and looking anxious.
He told the genie that while he appreciated the bountiful harvest and the high prices, he simply couldn't sell just yet because those prices were bound to go higher.
Tell that story to a group of farm women and the room will erupt with laughter. Many feel as though they are married to that farmer.
Farmers' legendary optimism combined with their lack of market clout is one reason the federal government built checks and balances into the Canada Grain Act of 1912. Farmers were vulnerable to buyers bidding so aggressively for grain they sometimes went out of business before the cheques were cashed.
Among those balances were requirements that anyone buying and selling grain had to be licensed by the Canadian Grain Commission and post security that would ensure farmers still received payment for their deliveries if the company unexpectedly went out of business. Most farmers have been blissfully unaware of the system until they've had to use it. And for most who have, their losses have only amounted to lost sleep.
Since 1982, the CGC has intervened in 20 situations involving a licensee's failure to pay, and farmers have received most, if not all, of the money they were owed. In total, there's been $12.4 million paid out to somewhere between 700 and 1,000 farmers over the past 27 years. A recent study of alternative options concluded the current producer-payment security system helps manage payment risk for 75 to 80 per cent of the farm cash receipts.
Of course, it comes at a cost.
The CGC requires licensed grain dealers to post about 1.5 per cent of their outstanding liabilities as security. So the 166 companies registered with the commission collectively have about $440 million tied up in security.
That costs the licensees an estimated $6.6 million with another $1 million in costs related to licensing, compliance and auditing -- costs that are presumably passed on to producers through handling charges.
Grain commission costs for monitoring and enforcement amount to an estimated $1.4 million, which brings the system's total costs to $9 million. That works out to about 23 cents per tonne (based on a 40-million tonne crop.)
Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz and some in the industry say the cost is too high. One of the proposed changes to the Canada Grain Act is to find a private-sector alternative to protecting producer payments.
Grain companies are understandably reluctant to tie up funds for payment security. Regularly submitting audited financial statements in to a government isn't so popular either.
Smaller companies have complained the system infringes on their ability to operate because it ties up too much of their operating capital. Some argue that restricts competition in the marketplace. But strangely enough, if there were no producer security provisions in place, the risk of delivering to a small undercapitalized buyer would be high enough that many farmers would be afraid of doing business with them.
So deregulation could in fact reduce the number of companies competing for farmers' grain.
A group of farm organizations commissioned the Producer Payment Security Mechanism report to see what else can be done. The study found that alternative options, such as an insurance-based model, a producer-financed security fund or a clearing house concept, are plausible. But none offers clear advantages either in cost or effectiveness. In fact, some would be significantly more expensive.
The clearing house financed by buyers and sellers would be voluntary, which is advantageous to some. But it would cost at least double and potentially four times as much to operate.
This report presents a dilemma for Ritz in his bid to "modernize" the Canadian Grain Commission. It underscores that a producer security strategy is crucial to stability for the grain sector and ensures there is competition. And it would appear that making participation mandatory and providing regulatory oversight by a third party are the preferred routes.
At a time when global leaders are looking enviously at Canada's record of capitalism with a degree of government oversight, leaving well enough alone might be the modern thing for Ritz to do. Back to:The Gerry Ritz Story: Can't Fall Back on Comedy
By Sarah Schmidt, Canwest News Service June 9, 2009
OTTAWA — None of the 57 newly hired inspectors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is dedicated to meat inspection, despite a promise by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz at the height of the deadly listeriosis crisis that they'd be on the "front lines."
In newly released information prepared for parliamentarians probing the state of food safety in Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says some of the new hires are working on the implementation of Product of Canada labelling guidelines, while others are conducting border blitzes for "high-risk commodities."
Others hired under the federal government's Food Safety Action Plan are sampling and testing high-risk foods, completing laboratory method validation studies for high-risk commodities or designing an enhanced identification system for food manufacturers. "Of these 57 full-time resources, none are dedicated to meat inspection," the briefing note, tabled Tuesday, states.
When Ritz announced these new positions last August after a definitive link was made between tainted meat produced at a Maple Leaf plant in Toronto and the deaths of Canadians, he told reporters the government was "targeting another 58 people to be on the front lines."
The CFIA was responding to a request from the NDP's food safety critic Malcolm Allen, who asked for a status report on these new hires, and whether they are "doing meat inspection or are they doing other things."
In an interview, Allen said the revelation shows Ritz wasn't being forthright with Canadians. "How do you square a circle?" he said.
"The minister left the impression with Canadians that all the inspections that were hired in the last little while were meat inspectors, and now we know this is untrue. The CFIA has unequivocally said to us this is not what they're going. So the difficulty we have, Canadians have, how to you have confidence in a minister who tells you . . . 'This is our remedy, we will hire people to do meat inspection,' and then they hire people and they don't do meat inspection."
In a statement Tuesday, the ministers office said there is "no discrepancy" between Ritz's statement last August and the newly released details. The CFIA said all inspectors are considered "front-line." (More jokes???)
At the time of Ritz's announcement involving the new hires, the union representing meat inspectors had already publicly complained of a shortage of staff stationed at meat plants, emphasizing the workload challenges with the introduction of the Compliance Verification System in April 2008. The inspection system requires plant inspectors to complete specific tasks on a prescribed timetable and review additional paperwork produced by the operators.
On Tuesday, union president Bob Kingston said he's not surprised by the latest revelation. "We've known all along they had nothing to do with meat inspection," he said of the new hires. "We've been saying it since Day 1. All they did was up a certain total of a certain classification and put their best foot forward, whether it was correct or not correct."
The parliamentary hearings, scheduled to wrap up this week, were called after people consumed contaminated meat last summer from a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto, resulting in the death of 22 Canadians.
Staffing levels at meat plants has dominated the parliamentary hearings.
Don Irons, a Toronto-based CFIA food processing supervisor, testified last month that "we were grossly understaffed at the time (prior to the listeriosis) outbreak. There are not enough inspectors to fully implement CVS (Compliance Verification System) 100 per cent." On Monday night, Brian Evans, the agency's executive vice-president, challenged this assessment. "I reject the notion that resources and staffing were insufficient to face the outbreak last summer . . . those who say otherwise serve a different agenda and constituency," he testified.
Meanwhile, CFIA president Carole Swan has privately warned Ritz of "challenges" in this area, according to another document already tabled with the food safety committee. According to the talking points prepared for her meeting with Ritz on Jan. 26, Swan briefed him that the "inspection program (is) experiencing workload challenges in meeting delivery requirements."
As Canadians wait for answers regarding Conservative complicity in the Listeriosis Outbreak that took the lives of 22 people, we have discovered that they have stacked the team with their own staff.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper stopped short of that as he named Sheila Weatherill this week to lead an "arm's-length investigation."
He appointed the former Edmonton health care executive even though Weatherill already serves on the prime minister's advisory committee to revamp the public service. Its mandate includes: "Branding the public service as a trusted and innovative institution of national importance."
Critics are asking how Weatherill can do that job while leading a probe into whether food safety agencies broke the public's trust. "I think it's pretty clear: Ms. Weatherill can be a cheerleader for the public service, or she can be an independent investigator of the public service," said University of Ottawa researcher Amir Attaran, a lawyer and biologist by training. "But she can't be both at the same time. In ignoring that reality, Mr. Harper has foolishly failed once again to keep conflicts of interest out of his government."
Attaran co-signed an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in the fall that charged that "government policy errors helped bring about" the listeriosis outbreak. Changes to government monitoring mean Canada now has some of the lowest listeria standards among developed countries, it said. It demanded a full public inquiry into Canada's food inspection system.
A "proper inquiry, convened under the Inquiries Act and with a judge sitting as a commissioner of inquiry, is needed more than ever," Attaran said Wednesday.
Twenty people died after developing listeriosis — a particular threat to the elderly, pregnant women, and those with fragile immune systems.
Weatherill is to assess what went wrong, how federal food-safety and recall systems responded, and make recommendations to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.
Her report is due July 20. That's four months past the original March 15 due date outlined when Harper first promised the probe last September, a few days before calling an early federal election.
The prime minister's office says Weatherill won't publicly comment until her report is finished. The government will then decide what details to release.
Harper's office has deflected criticism for the delay in appointing Weatherill, saying it took time to find the right person for the job. Spokesman Kory Teneycke also dismissed Wednesday suggestions that she is in conflict.
"Quite the opposite," he said. "We think that Ms. Weatherill's commitment to strengthening the public service and attracting top-level people…is actually very consistent with her investigating how to improve the processes in government — both at the federal and provincial levels — and make recommendations so that if a similar situation were to occur in the future that the government response would be even better."
Of particular interest is the extent to which the Prime Minister's Office may have tried to micro-manage the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is supposed to be arm's-length, Easter says.
"The fact of the matter is her credibility has already been compromised in her ability to do the job," Easter said of Weatherill. "She will certainly be perceived…as a friend of the prime minister."
Weatherill's selection as a standard-bearer for public-service reform raised eyebrows for other reasons.
Alberta's auditor general took aim last October at some of the million-dollar salaries paid to heads of regional health boards, including Weatherill. She earned $915,000 a year as head of Edmonton's Capital Health until she and seven other top executives lost their jobs last July. Their dismissals were part of the provincial Conservative government's move to integrate separate health regions into one super board.
Auditor General Fred Dunn was harshly critical of the health boards that approved such salaries. "How and why did they arrive at this level of compensation?" he asked at the time. "In some cases, I don't believe it was as robustly negotiated as it should have been."
Weatherill was paid almost $3.5 million in a severance and retirement package under those contract terms.
OTTAWA – Confirmation that listeriosis investigator Sheila Weatherill has hired employees from the very government departments that are at the centre of the probe shows that the Harper government has never been serious about an independent inquiry that will get to the bottom of what happened last summer, Liberal MPs said today.
In a written reply received on May 10th by the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Food Safety, Ms. Weatherill confirmed that she has seconded six federal public servants from Agriculture & Agri-food Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Environment Canada.
“Three of the departments and agencies directly involved in the listeriosis crisis of last summer – departments and agencies whose actions should be under scrutiny – have provided the staff for this investigation,” said Liberal Agriculture Critic Wayne Easter. “How can anyone honestly believe that this investigation is independent of government, when the majority of staff come from the government and departments under investigation?”
The Conservatives have been insisting that they are properly dealing with this matter since announcing back in January the appointment of Ms. Weatherill to head the investigation. At the time, the Prime Minister said: “I am confident that Sheila Weatherill has the expertise required to independently examine the factors that contributed to the listeriosis outbreak and make recommendations on how to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.”
“We have said from the beginning that the way this examination has been set up is the farthest thing from independent – and it turns out we were right,” said Liberal Health Critic Dr. Carolyn Bennett. “We object to the limited mandate given to Ms. Weatherill by the Harper government. The resources and power given to her by Prime Minister Harper are too limited to reveal what actually happened. It’s why we have consistently called for an independent inquiry – so that Canadians will have all the facts and can rest assured that their food is safe.”
Mr. Easter concluded that it’s time for the government to admit that this inquiry fails the test of independence and is not at arms length. “There are no public hearings, no indication of who this investigator is interviewing and whose very report will be sent to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, who is most directly involved in the government’s response to this crisis. That is not what Canadians expected and certainly not what they deserve,” he said.
One concerned biologist released documents relating to the 'secret' moves, that he didn't realize were even secret because they had been posted right there on the web. He was fired immediately, despite the fact that the error was made higher up the chain.
What has also raised concerns is the fact the report reveals his intention to end the testing of cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease). No wonder they didn't want the documents revealed, because he would have had more than just mad cows to deal with.
OTTAWA - A government plan to transfer key parts of food inspection to industry so companies can police themselveswill put the health of Canadians at risk, according to leading food safety experts who have reviewed the confidential blueprint.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is also ending funding to producers to test cattle for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or Mad Cow Disease) as part of a surveillance program, the document indicates, a move that is expected to save the agency about $24 million over the next three years.
The new system, part of a push to trim the agency's budget by five per cent, was approved last November, but a public announcement "has been deferred owing to significant communications risks," according to the confidential Treasury Board document obtained by Canwest News Service.
The document, addressed to the president of the agency, details how the inspection of meat and meat products will downgrade agency inspectors to an "oversight role, allowing industry to implement food safety control programs and to manage key risks."
The inspection of animal feed mills will undergo the same changes "to reduce the need for ongoing CFIA inspection and would shift CFIA's role to oversight and verification of industry outcomes."
For the certification of commercial seed, "this means shifting the program delivery of seed certification, including inspection, to an industry-led third party."
Leading food safety experts, who reviewed the document, say the plan is a recipe for disaster.
"They're moving towards the U.S. model, where the inspectors don't actually do the inspection, they just oversee and the companies actually do the inspection. That's a really dangerous thing," said Michael Hansen, a North American authority on BSE and senior scientist with the New York-based Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports.
Hansen, who in the past has been invited by parliamentary committees to testify as an expert on food safety issues, says the end of the BSE reimbursement program is of "highest concern."
A leading Canadian academic specializing in food risk management called these cuts "unfathomable" because Canada continues to find BSE-positive animals and is one of the few countries in the world where BSE is on the increase.
The expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is near unanimous agreement among public health experts that "the greatest risks" of new emerging infectious disease are related to animal products and food.
Avian Influenza, SARS, BSE and Ebola "are just the tip of an iceberg," he said.
"Reducing food safety controls at this time could be disastrous if there is an outbreak of a new food-borne disease. No wonder they suspect they may have some 'communication risks' around these initiatives. They have a huge communications risk."
The proposals are illogical, said University of Guelph professor Ann Clark, a specialist in risk assessment in genetically modified crops, who has testified many times before Parliament's agriculture committee about risk management and the food supply.
"Companies are in business to make profit, pure and simple, and we, as a society, have fully accepted and bought into that, but with the understanding that somebody will be riding herd on them - minding the shop - to safeguard societal interests.
Otherwise, history has shown that we are at risk," said Clark, citing industries such as tobacco and asbestos.
"The initiatives outlined in this document suggest government is trying to get out of the business of government,by downloading responsibility for safeguarding human and environmental health to the same industry interests which stand to make money from what is being regulated. This is inherently illogical."
The plan was approved by Treasury Board one month before Prime Minister Stephen Harper, along with Ritz and Health Minister Tony Clement, announced last December a new food and consumer action plan to make Canadians safer through "tougher" regulations of food and other consumer products.
The plan, in the hands of senior CFIA staff since May to map out a communications plan to roll out the changes, has already led to the dismissal of an agency scientist.
Luc Pomerleau, who stumbled upon the blueprint on a server where it was posted in error and could be accessed by any agency employee, was dismissed last week because he forwarded it to union officials at the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada. Union president Michele Demers said he was seeking advice on how to deal with the matter because it appeared the plan undermined the health and safety of Canadians.
OTTAWA - Confidential documents insecurely posted on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's computer network laid out sensitive plans to turn over food inspections and labelling to industry and also led to the firing of the scientist who stumbled upon them. Luc Pomerleau, a biologist with a 20-year "unblemished record" in government, said he was fired last week for "gross misconduct' and breaching security because he sent the documents to his union. Pomerleau, who is a union steward, also was deemed "unreliable," which means he no longer has the security clearance to do his job or to work again in the public service.
The documents appear to involve a re-organizing of food inspection that will shift more of the onus for food safety to the suppliers that manufacture and distribute food and other products. (The documents can be seen here)
The changes are part of the government's strategic review, which requires departments to find savings worth five per cent of their operating budgets to be reallocated to priorities of the Harper government. The document, marked confidential, is a letter from Treasury Board Secretary Wayne Wouters to CFIA President Carole Swan, explaining that the government approved the proposed cuts, but warned some have "communication risks," so will have to be deferred until a communication plan is ready. CFIA spokesman J.P. St-Amand, citing privacy reasons, wouldn't comment on the firing except to say "due process was followed," including an investigation into how the documents landed in the hands of a "third-party." Public servants join the government, pledging to be loyal and sign security agreements, to safeguard classified information.
In an interview, Pomerleau said he stumbled on the document on the server in a directory that could be accessed by any of the agency's 6,500 employees. He said he assumed the document couldn't still be confidential or it wouldn't have been scanned and left there for anyone to find. He said the document was marked with a small "confidential" stamp in the right hand corner, but none of the pages was marked as is typically done for confidential material.
"It was accessible to anyone," he said. "If the document hadn't been there and the people in charge of the document had taken care of it properly, I wouldn't have seen it."
Michele Demers, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said Pomerleau is a "scapegoat" and firing was "way out of proportion" for a mistake that was made by a senior manager who authorized the document to be scanned. The document records the results of a November 2007 Treasury Board meeting where ministers approved the proposed cuts for the upcoming February budget. The changes will affect the inspection of animal feed mills, the certification of commercial seed, and eliminate mandatory label registration of meat and processed products. It also calls for consolidating three import service centres into one central facility and proposed spending cuts on equipment for the Avian Influenza Preparedness Program.
In this case, the document was still confidential because the agency hasn't completed its consultations with the industry and other stakeholders on the changes, said St. Amand.
Demers said Pomerleau happened on the documents in May and sent them to the union, which in turn circulated them among a handful of union officials. The agency found out about the document being circulated when union officials produced it at a union-management meeting and asked what the changes were all about. Pomerleau was suspended during the probe.
Demers said that when she realized the documents were considered confidential she ordered a recall of any copies the union distributed and returned them to the agency as a "show of goodwill." She said Pomerleau only sought the union's advice on the changes "which is a normal reflex of any union steward."
She said the incident exposed another embarrassing security breach for the government, but the mistake rested with whomever authorized the documents be put on the server.
At the official launch announcement of PublicValues.ca, Kingston said that CFIA cutbacks, which contributed to the outbreak, were more moderate than those planned by the Conservative government for other departments.
"Along comes the Harper government. It's the first government that's actually listened to them," said Kingston, "and blindly followed what they said. We're seeing that sector by sector. They have a belief that corporations are intrinsically good and the profit motive will always lead you to ultimately the best result... I think it's deadly, obviously, when it's acted out in real life."
Here is an excerpted transcript of Kingston's remarks at the launch of PublicValues.ca:
I mention this as the tip of the iceberg. I don't think that could be overstated. The whole issue around food safety and the deregulation - it's been going on for a while but it came to a head of course this summer with the listeria outbreak. Leading into it was the release of a document that outlined this government's plans for the slaughterhouses. What they have already done, in terms of the self-policing of the food industry, has taken place within the processing end of it. Their next target was the slaughter plants, where the risk is even greater.
That's the document that a member got fired for bringing to the attention of their union.
That's the one you can still see on our website, that FoodSafetyFirst website. What people need to know, that was part of the strategic review at CFIA. CFIA was only one of 18 departments that was in the same boat. And CFIA was actually treated kinder by this government, believe it or not, than the other 17 departments that were being reviewed.
I'd suggest there are 17 other documents floating around just like it. And that was only year one of the strategic review initiated by the Harper government. Every year they take a quarter of the public service and they do the same analysis of their work and that means these strategic review documents are now in play for the second round of departments, and on and on it will go.
They're not asking departments to justify what they do... What they're saying is, you have to identify the lowest 5 percent of what you think is your priorities. It's hard to tell that to CFIA, because of course what they deal with, everything they deal with most people would consider somewhat critical. But they had to identify their 5 percent lowest priority and reallocate funds.
Treasury Board told them flat out, the Harper Treasury Board told them flat out that if they didn't it would be done for them. That's what all the departments are facing. So it really doesn't matter whether the lowest 5 percent in a given department might be the top 5 percent in any other department. That's irrelevant. They just want to see cuts, cuts, cuts. I know they keep talking about pumping more money into it, but you can take a look at any year's spending plans that this government has in place and you will see the next two years always, always, without exception, are about cuts and cuts and cuts.No matter what kind of nonsense they keep saying about increasing spending.
What the Harper Conservatives are all about is deregulation and privatizing. But beyond the privatizing part of it, it's the self-policing — that nonsense that it's in the company's best interests to put out good products, so basically, why do you need regulation? If that were true, we wouldn't even be in a financial crisis.
It really is the tip of the iceberg. It's a tragedy that 20 people had to die before this government even paid attention. They still tried to bury it as an election item, saying they were going to have an inquiry...
We're doing everything we can to keep [these issues] in the public eye during the election. We hope that other people take up the issues of privatization, self-policing, etc., as well and hold these guys accountable.Because right now they are so ideologically bent toward this stuff it is scary. There's no rhyme or reason. There's no rational discussions you can have with these folks.
Take the Canadian Wheat Board, for example. They say they consult with farmers. Well, the Minister had a meeting here in Ottawa where he had what he considered industry representatives.
It was something called Western Canada Barley Growers Association. When they had to file documents in court in Calgary, when the farmers took Harper to court, this Western Canada Barley Growers Association had about 140 something members and most of them were corporations, not even growers.And the 10,000 barley growers that are out in the west — I don't think would honestly feel this is a true representation of their interests.
But the National Farmers Union, which does represent about 10,000 members, were totally shut out of the meeting. They even showed up in town here and asked to attend, and it was a secret meeting.They wouldn't tell them where the address was. So this is the way Harper's government has been running. I mean, they're locked onto an ideological path and no amount of logic seems to sway them. So it's only public outcry that I think will eventually do the trick, and launching a site like this, I'm hoping, will help get us there.
We have legislation in place since 1912 - the Grain Act - to protect small farmers in this country and basically a way of life and to oversee a system where everybody could profitably exist. It was put in place, as I said, specifically to protect small producers from large international companies.
The companies we're talking about, Cargill, Dreyfus, etc., they're the largest private companies on the planet. Between a handful of them they control about 80 percent of the world's food supply. They have been lobbying successive governments since 1912 to change that act and get rid of it, because it protected farmers from them.
And they couldn't control the farmers in Canada the way they do in many other countries. Along comes the Harper government. It's the first government that's actually listened to them, and blindly followed what they said. We're seeing that sector by sector. They have a belief that corporations are intrinsically good and the profit motive will always lead you to ultimately the best result...
That seems to follow every decision they make with respect to deregulation — the profit motive will eventually get us to some perfect place. I think it's deadly, obviously, when it's acted out in real life and they just don't seem to get it. But we're convinced it's pure ideology and they tolerate no resistance.
As a matter of fact, when they lost their first court case in Calgary, before they appealed it in Winnipeg — this is when the farmers all took them to court when they tried to deconstruct the Wheat Board — and the courts actually said, this organization belongs to farmers. You need to talk to farmers. One of his ministers at the time, Chuck Strahl, was asked: what does this court case mean? And he said, maybe it means we need to talk to farmers. Within two hours he was fired and Harper had gone on national TV and directly contradicted him. We're not talking to farmers, period.
And that's how Gerry Ritz got the job. I mean, this guy will tolerate no opposition... I've been around for a while and I've never seen a leader of this country so ideologically bent in one direction. Back to - The Gerry Ritz Story: Can't Fall Back on Comedy
Meat safety 'impossible' job Maple Leaf plant wasn't audited properly before listeria outbreak, angry inspectors say
Toronto Star Apr 20, 2009
Robert Cribb STAFF REPORTER
The Maple Leaf plant at the centre of last summer's deadly listeria tragedy wasn't subject to a detailed safety audit by federal inspectors for at least a year prior to the outbreak, says a briefing note from the union representing inspectors.
Inadequate resources, staff shortages and overtime bans on federal inspectors have prevented the mandatory annual safety audits from being completed, says the union, which has sent its briefing note to members of a federal subcommittee investigating the listeria outbreak.
The inspectors, who prepared the note based on observations as part of their jobs, are presenting it this week at federal hearings.
"When it comes to delivering the legally required oversight of Canada's meat and food safety systems, it's mission impossible for CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency)," says the briefing note.
"The agency simply does not have the resources to do the job Canadians expect and the CFIA's own policies demand."
Tim O'Connor, a spokesperson for the agency, said that while a full system audit was not done at the plant leading up to the outbreak, a different auditing system had been put in place that incorporates the same level of oversight.
That new federal inspection routine has come under fiery criticism from inspectors, politicians and the public for handing too much oversight to plant staff while overworked inspectors are left to check company paperwork.
Bob Kingston, president of the union representing federal meat inspectors, said full system audits remain a crucial element of the agency's oversight duties.
"Day-to-day checks don't replace a detailed system audit.You cannot have an audit system without a comprehensive audit. It's still definitely part of the program and that's the one that was not done."
Any fundamental flaws at the Maple Leaf plant, and others like it, could have been caught by a comprehensive system audit in which four or five inspectors analyze an operation "from top to bottom" over a week, Kingston said.
"Those are the kinds of inspections that, in the past, have picked up serious kinds of problems. They were not done in this case."
The Maple Leaf listeria outbreak caused 21 deaths and sickened hundreds, perhaps thousands, more.
There are other safety shortcomings detailed in the briefing note.
Inspectors responsible for overseeing more than two plants that produce cold cuts do not have time to verify the facilities are complying with food safety requirements, it says. And most inspectors assigned to such safety sensitive plants are responsible for three or more facilities, the union alleges in the note.
"The inspector at the contaminated Maple Leaf plant in Toronto was responsible for seven facilities at the time of the listeriosis outbreak," it says.
The CFIA's O'Connor confirmed that statement.
Cost-cutting measures at the food inspection agency included banning overtime for inspectors before last summer's tragedy, the note says. "As a result, CFIA inspectors were unable to verify that pre-operation and sanitation inspections at ready-to-eat meat processing plants in Ontario and Quebec were properly conducted by plant employees, including at the Maple Leaf plant."
Increasing industry self-regulation has contributed to less scrutiny around food safety issues that impact the public, it says.
The shortage of inspectors and resources in meat plants across the country is likely to get worse, the document warns.
The CFIA is planning an emergency fund to deal with outbreaks of food or animal-borne illnesses that could reduce the agency's operational budget by 10 to 15 per cent. CFIA supervisors across the country have been getting calls from senior managers in recent weeks advising them to expect "big cuts," said the union's Kingston.
The Union had issued warnings before the Listeriosis outbreak, so were not surprised by the news:
The fallout from Ritz's comments came on the same day a public-sector union alleged that a re-elected federal Conservative government would pull out of meat inspection programs in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. According to the Public Service Alliance of Canada, a secret report from the Treasury Board of Canada released this past May proposed that they could save $3 million by cutting federal meat inspection programs.
Patty Ducharme is the union's national executive vice-president. She told The Canadian Press that if a re-elected Tory government makes the proposed cuts, consumers would be the ones who pay.
"Meat produced in provincially registered facilities would not be inspected," Ducharme said. "Under this type of a scenario, consumers would have to count on the fact that producers would produce their products in a fashion that ensures their safety."
In 2007 when Stephen Harper met with George Bush and Mexican President Calderon in Montibello, they adopted a new strategy for food inspection.
