Canadian Food Inspection Agency president Carole Swan is retiring four years into a five-year appointment.
The 36-year veteran bureaucrat led the agency during the deadly 2008 listeria outbreak and the subsequent years of trying to restore faith in the food inspection system, including using government promises of new money to expand the inspection staff.
The CFIA and its inspectors’ union continue to argue over exactly how many inspectors have been added.
The resignation is effective June 30, and the prime minister’s office will be scrambling to find a replacement.
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Industry insider speculation is that executive vice-president George Da Pont has the inside track on the job. He has been in the position for a year and is a former Canadian Coast Guard commissioner from Saskatchewan.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said the Prime Minister’s Office and Privy Council office will make the hiring decision.
“I will not interfere in that,” he said. “I know it takes the right person to do the job and I’ll be interested to see the short list.”
Ritz praised Swan.
“I’m sorry to see Carole go, she’s done an excellent job at CFIA,” he said. “We’ve worked through some serious issues together and I respect her abilities.”
Reaction to her legacy was mixed.
Canadian Meat Council executive director Jim Laws said his meat packer members are sorry to see her leave.
“It’s a very complex position with responsibility for a lot of acts and a lot of employees,” he said.
“We always found her to be very courteous and respectful of our views.”
Bob Kingston, president of the Agriculture Union of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which represents CFIA inspectors and often clashed with Swan over staffing and funding issues, said he respected her.
“I think she did the best she could with the cards she was dealt,” he said. “I always found her open to conversation. She wasn’t from the agriculture industry nor from a science-based department so it was a tough job for her to assume.”
However, he said she also was part of the problem by not admitting that the agency is underfunded and understaffed.
“They are in a finger-in-the-dike situation always and they know it, so I wish she had been more open about the challenges the agency faces,” said Kingston.
