9 Responses for "Lax food-safety inspections not Tories’ but Liberals’ fault!"

1. Darwin O'Connor October 9th, 2008 at 7:36 am 1

   Of course, the NDP has been opposing this since the beginning.

2. Vincent October 9th, 2008 at 7:37 am 2

   This line of blaming the Liberals is SOOOO OLD.

   The Conservatives have been in power for 3 years. If laws were relaxed by the Liberal it is debatable, but the Conservatives have had 3 years to correct anything they felt was too lax. At the end of the day, this happened under the Conservatives watch, not the Liberals. And it was Harper who was in havour of allowing the industry to police itself and further relax inspections. At best, the Conservatives were in lock step with the policies that the previous Liberal government laid down, and wanted to relax them further as recently as 2 months ago.

   The Conservatives can’t simply wash their hands of this. At best they were neglegent and didn’t re-evaluate the policies of the previous government when they came to power. At worst, they knowingly did not do anything because they argeed with policy and in fact wanted to de-regulate further.

   And people wonder why the Conservatives are sinking in the polls. The don’t except responsibility for anything that happens under there watch.

3. Matt October 9th, 2008 at 8:01 am 3

   Talk about the “same old story” – the Tories are in power period. They spent the last 13 years telling us how terrible the Liberals were. Surely the first thing they did once they got the helm was review the policies of that terrible government and ensure that problems were fixed? The government in power wears the scandal – that’s how it should be.

4. brent October 9th, 2008 at 8:04 am 4

   So let me get this straight. The conservatives have been the government for the last 2 and a half years yet it’s the previous government’s fault for the listeriosis outbreak? That makes so much sense

5. Kieran October 9th, 2008 at 8:42 am 5

   The Liebrals only started it. If you review the 2008 federal budget documents the Conservative piled on additional cuts to the CFIA under the guise of restructuring.

   As well, the Conservative bear sole responsibility for torpedoing one of the most advanced on-farm food safety programs in the world. The farmers’ group Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) and the various commodity organizations were running a world-recognized, audited, voluntary on-farm food safaety program. However because the CFA was opposing the Conservatives on the Canadian Wheat Board, the Minister of AGriculture expropriated the program and gave it to government bureaucrats to manage in an act of political punishment and retribution. SInce then the program has dropped off the map.

6. Werner Patels (Non-Partisan/Western Canadian Sovereigntist) October 9th, 2008 at 12:30 pm 6

   Vincent, the government agency in charge is putting the blame on the previous Liberal government. Those are not the words of the Harper government, but of the civil servants in charge of the agency.

   The Liberals have left a lot of garbage lying around the country …

7. Rich October 9th, 2008 at 1:24 pm 7

   Werner, for an alleged non-partisan you’ve written an awful lot of blog posts recently defending the Conservatives and bashing their opponents on a whole host of issues. Is is just a coincidence that you’ve fudged the facts each time? I’m starting to think you keep posting new topics just to wind other people up.

8. Whiskey Echo (N. Van, unaffiliated Canadian nationalist) October 9th, 2008 at 4:46 pm 8

   It’s the Harper Conservatives who have championed the myth of “self-regulation” – with food inspection, environmental enforcement, transportation (remember how many CN derailments due to negligence went unpunished?), etc. See “industry self-regulation” is a myth because when government fails to watch over industry, it will be lax on safety and people will suffer. Governments must given, they can’t just let it slide and assume everything will be OK. But that’s precisely what the Conservative ideology is promoting – non-regulation which is called “self-regulation”.

9. ivanr October 10th, 2008 at 2:09 am 9

   What has not been clearly stated are the differences in specific SOPs (standard operating procedures) for testing. The union has stated their hands are now tied. I suspect this is nothing but politically motivated positioning. For example.

   Prior to the Liberal changes was there a huge lab somewhere run by the government where the local inspectors did all the testing at the lab bench? Did the inspector stand behind the company QA personnel in the lab and ensure they did every test and did them correctly?? Or, as I suspect, was the role of the inspector to review the SOPs and the documentation that was provided by the company lab and their personnel demonstrating they followed the agreed regulations, and do so on some schedule as set out in the regulations.

   So what was different and how would the old way of doing it have prevented this tragic outcome. Isn’t that really the question the media and Canadians should be asking?