The moment the May 15 news release from New Democrat agriculture critic Malcolm Allen landed in my in box, you could smell trouble — road kill trouble.
“Conservative changes will allow road kill on your table,” blared the headline.
Proposed changes to federal meat inspection rules would allow injured or dangerous animals to be slaughtered on the farm under a vet’s supervision and then quickly transported to a processor or a slaughter plant and allowed into the system with normal inspection.
“They’re essentially allowing road kill-ready meat into the food supply,” Allen said in the news release.
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Deputy NDP agriculture critic Ruth Ellen Roseau added that in the 1970s, Quebec had a “rotten meat scandal” because of a lack of regulation, and Ottawa was heading down the same road.
Oh dear.
Political discourse is a funny business. Outrageous and exaggerated claims are made all the time and it is considered legitimate rhetorical coin.
But even in politics, there is a line.
When the Progressive Conservatives in the1993 election campaign ran a photo of Jean Chrétien’s face, partially paralyzed because of a childhood disease, and wondered if this was who Canadians wanted to represent them abroad, the oxygen was sucked out of the campaign.
In 2004, when NDP leader Jack Layton blamed then-prime minister Paul Martin for the death of homeless people in Toronto, the backlash was visceral.
This year, when public safety minister Vic Toews said MPs opposing one of his “tough on crime” electronic snooping bills were “on the side of the child pornographers,” it was instantly clear he had gone way too far.
So it is with the road kill allegation.
The regulations would allow no such thing. The meat industry and cattle producers support the change and they have no interest in introducing unsafe meat into the system.
On a CBC television panel hours after the news release was issued, rural Ontario Conservative MP Pierre Lemieux, parliamentary secretary to agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, said the allegation was an “insult” to farmers, packers and meat inspectors.
Allen gamefully tried to defend himself, arguing that at least it got people talking about Conservative cuts to food inspection and the weakening of the system.
“We got attention to the issue,” he said.
“But you lose credibility,” shot back Liberal agriculture critic Frank Valeriote.
It did have the feel of going beyond the realm of decent political rhetoric.
