Ghost of Conservascandals past

While the focus is on sexier scandals, we shouldn't lose track of the method the Harpoids used to place Canadians in mortal peril last summer.

New inspectors not dedicated to meat plants
None of the 57 newly hired inspectors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are dedicated to meat inspection, despite a promise by Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz at the height of the deadly listeriosis crisis that they would be on the "front lines."...When Ritz announced the 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 22 Canadians, he said 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 were "doing meat inspection or are they doing other things."

Allen said the revelation shows Ritz wasn't being forthright with Canadians.

"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," he said. "The CFIA has unequivocally said to us this is not what they're doing.

"So the difficulty we have, Canadians have, how do 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."

Incompetence requires non-confidence.Recommend this Post