While opposition MPs in a Parliament Hill debate yesterday pointed fingers at the Conservative government for allowing the Alberta-based E. coli contamination crisis to unfold, an influential Conservative blamed the company.
As the Conservative government and agriculture minister Gerry Ritz came under sustained opposition fire this week for poor communications and slow reaction to the spread of contaminated product from the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., Manitoba cattle producer and national defence committee chair James Bezan said it is not the government’s fault.
“If the member understood the situation we are dealing with right now in Brooks, if he understood the situation with XL Foods, he would know that there is only one player in this whole situation that we need to blame and that really needs to be held to account and that is XL itself,” Bezan told interim Liberal leader Bob Rae during an emergency House of Commons debate on the issue.
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“That side (the opposition) wants to play political games,” he said. “Those members want to blame the government and CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency), but they never once say that we should look at the culprit in all of this, the company.”
XL executives have not responded.
Opposition MPs used the debate to denounce Ritz for being missing-in-action during the Commons debate this week and three days of questions as well as the CFIA for delaying a closing of the XL plant for more than two weeks after the United States closed the border because it caught E. coli-tainted product.
Ritz was absent for question period Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as opposition MPs lined up with questions. He held a truncated press conference in Calgary yesterday that was abruptly ended by his communications handlers after four questions.
Ritz was in the Commons today and fielded almost a half hour of questions, insisting CFIA handling of the E. coli case had been proper.
The night before during the emergency debate, Rae accused Ritz of hiding.
“That is cowardice,” he said. “How else could we describe a minister who cannot defend himself in the House of Commons, cannot defend the actions of the CFIA in the House of Commons and he goes to Alberta for a photo op and he cannot even defend himself at the photo op? Something has gone clearly wrong.”
Opposition MPs insisted during the Commons debate and in question period that government budget cuts are in part to blame for the failure of CFIA to catch meat contamination in the plant.
Conservative Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to Ritz, said yesterday that rather than food safety cuts, the government has budgeted $150 million more for food safety programs in the past two years.
“Our government remains committed to ensuring that the food Canadians and their families eat is safe,” he said.
