Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz made his first national media appearance Monday since his late-evening apology for what he described as “tasteless” jokes about the listeria outbreak that has now claimed 19 Canadian lives.
But after using an all-party agriculture debate to blame the previous Liberal government for compromises to food safety, the minister bolted for a backdoor exit and avoided questions from reporters.
During the two-hour debate at Ottawa's Chateau Laurier Hotel, the minister kept away from direct references to the listeria outbreak and his controversial comments.
The embattled minister was attacked by his Liberal, NDP and Green critics for his government's handling of food safety.
“This should be a defining issue in this election,” said Liberal MP and agriculture critic Wayne Easter, who joined Mr. Ritz on stage at the debate sponsored by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. Mr. Easter criticized the government over a “secret document” that surfaced this summer showing a plan to transfer certain meat-inspection responsibilities to industry as a way of saving money.
“The bottom line is this: Under Stephen Harper, he has a belief to get government basically out of governing, to download responsibility onto provinces in some cases, and download responsibility onto industry. That's why we have seen the listeriosis crisis, to a certain extent. Or that should be a shot across the bow not to go that way.”
Mr. Ritz, however, came prepared to fight back.
He listed several examples of the previous Liberal government cutting food-safety programs and transferring inspection duties to industry.
“Let's talk about how we got to this situation,” Mr. Ritz began as the topic turned to food safety.
He then went on to list Liberal cuts to food safety from 1994 to 1996 that eliminated nearly 1,300 food-safety positions and transferred inspection responsibilities to industry.
“Why did the Liberals choose to cut on a [core] responsibility like food safety? Those negative impacts over that decade have some serious outcomes,” said Mr. Ritz. “There were shortages of inspectors, veterinarians, scientists, scientific equipment, institutional knowledge, training and, of course, industry was forced to pick up the slack. These consequences have been very serious.”
Mr. Ritz said his government's 2008 budget moved to “reintroduce” $113-million toward food and product safety.
Moments after he made the accusations, the Conservative Party e-mailed individual reporters covering the debate with links to government documents supporting Mr. Ritz's assessment of Liberal budget cuts to food safety.
The supporting documents included a passage from then-Liberal-finance-minister Paul Martin's 1996 budget speech.
“One of the best ways to reduce cost is to reduce overlap and duplication,” Mr. Martin told the House of Commons. “Surely we can all agree that it is simply silly for a food-processing plant to have a federal meat inspector, a federal health inspector, a federal fish inspector, not to mention a provincial health inspector and a provincial food inspector tripping over themselves on the same day, in the same plant, doing essentially the same thing.”
Mr. Ritz issued a late-evening apology earlier this month for what he described as “tasteless” jokes during an Aug. 30 conference call with government officials. During the call, which was not meant to become public, Mr. Ritz said the outbreak traced to deli meats was causing the government a death of a thousand cuts “or should I say the death of a thousand cold cuts.” He also joked that he hoped a reported fatality in PEI was Mr. Easter.
Mr. Easter told Mr. Ritz that his remarks show the potential political fallout of the outbreak was more important to the government than the safety of Canadians.
“Yes, there is a little dispute between you and [me]whether I [should] be above ground or underground,” said Mr. Easter. “But that's beside the point and it's not the real issue. The real issue in terms of that conference call [is that] you, minister, were more concerned about the politics of the situation, which is typical Harper government.”
After the debate, Mr. Easter said the Liberal cuts in the mid-1990s were part of a government-wide effort to eliminate the federal deficit. He said the Liberals spent more on food safety “later on” once the deficit was under control.
New Democratic MP Tony Martin, who repeatedly accused both the Liberals and Conservatives of underfunding food safety, said the Conservatives should still be held responsible for the outbreak.
“[Mr. Harper] should ask for his resignation,” Mr. Martin told reporters. “[Mr. Ritz] decided that after spending two hours avoiding the issue and not talking about it, [he would] slip out the back door.”
