The Federal Minister contrasts poorly with the President of Maple Leaf.
News reports today have the Minister defending the food inspection standards we have in Canada and suggesting nothing went wrong causing problems at Maple Leaf.
In a sense, of course, the Minister has a point. Canada does have excellent food inspection standards and food poisoning is very rare.
But, something certainly went very very wrong at Maple Leaf -- people shouldn't die from eating a ham and cheese sandwich -- and that 'something' came shortly after changes where Federal inspections were downloaded from the regulator to the industry regulated.
Was the downloading the cause? We can't say yet. My guess is that someone at Maple Leaf made a tragic mistake -- not motivated by cost cutting or malice, just a mistake -- and another set of eyes might or might not have caught the error. But a properly staffed Federal inspection agency is necessary and to download inspections to industry (in a less than transparent way -- who knew before the Maple Leaf tragedy?) is clearly wrong (remember Walkerton?).
For the Minister to say 'all is well' is just not true and bad bad bad politics. It is an attempt to deal with a problem by denying the problem exists.
Contrast the Minister's brush off of concerns with the genuine and serious acknowledgment of fault, apology and vigorous action of the President of Maple Leaf -- this leader is a leader.
Maybe we can convince the President of Maple Leaf to come into politics -- if he's a Tory he'd bring some candor to the job.
1 comment:
Morton, usually you stay away from hyper partisan nonsense like this.
Walkerton had NOTHING to do with Mike Harris or Tony Clement.
It had to do with two brothers who didn't do their job. That has been proven.
Next, trying to equate the Federal Gov in this is childish.
How can Mike Harris be responsible for Walkerton, while Harper is responsible for Maple Leaf?
One would assume that using your logic, if Mike Harris was responsible for Walkerton, then Dalton has to be responsible for Maple Leaf.
Where am I wrong?
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