The House of Commons will spend the better part of Oct. 18 debating whether Gerry Ritz should step down as federal agriculture minister.
In the end, the Conservative majority will say no but the day-long debate will give critics a chance to air their grievances about a minister they say has bungled the XL Foods E. coli meat recall incident.
“It really is about holding him to account because I don’t believe he has fulfilled his duty as minister on this file,” New Democratic Party agriculture critic Malcolm Allen said in an interview Oct. 17.
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The debate comes a day after the Senate approved Bill S-11, the Food Safety Act, that would strengthen the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, increase surveillance of imported foods and impose a mandatory traceability system on the Canadian food system.
The bill now goes to the House of Commons and Ritz insists that once passed, it will give the CFIA more power to deal with issues such as safety lapses at the XL Brooks, Alta plant.
Allen says that claim is nonsense. “Existing legislation already gives the minister the power to act but he dropped the ball.”
The southwest Ontario MP convinced his caucus to give him Thursday’s opposition day space to move a motion that Ritz step down over his performance in the XL Foods E. coli episode, that proposed funding cuts for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency be cancelled and that the auditor general rather than the government conduct an audit of CFIA resources.
With few opposition days when the government does not get to set the topic of discussion, getting agriculture and food safety on the agenda is a coup for Allen.
But since the NDP (and the Liberals) have been peppering the government with questions about its role in the largest meat recall in Canadian history, Allen said it wasn’t a hard sell inside his caucus Oct. 17 when it decided what topic to feature Thursday.
“I didn’t really have to work too hard on it actually,” he said. “Tom (NDP leader Thomas Mulcair) called for his resignation last week so this really is part of our campaign to show that this minister has bungled this issue.”
