By almost any measure, last week was not a good one for federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz.
Consumers were getting sick from contaminated beef shipped from the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., and while critics howled about food safety cuts and the fact that XL products were blocked from the United States Sept. 13, it was two weeks later when the plant was ordered closed to protect Canadian consumers.
Meanwhile, Ritz was more or less on his own.
The last time he faced a food safety crisis was 2008 in the midst of an election campaign when the Maple Leaf listeria outbreak occurred and that time, company president Michael McCain wrote the book on effective crisis management communications by quickly absolving the government and blaming his company.
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In a way, he took Ritz of the hook.
This time, the secretive Nilsson brothers who own XL Foods have been, well, secretive and Ritz has been forced to defend the government by blaming the company — not a position he normally is comfortable assuming and certainly not good PR for the company.
It didn’t help that Ritz was not in the House of Commons to defend himself, his department and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, giving opposition critics free rein to level charges while the agricultural B team tried to answer.
“The minister is missing in action,” groused NDP leader Thomas Mulcair.
Ritz was in his riding those days, but his absence from Ottawa fed the frenzy about a government in hiding.
It didn’t help that when he finally surfaced on Wednesday in Calgary, he offered few details and was quickly given the hook by his communications staff after just a few questions.
It was a nationally televised news conference and media not accustomed to the brutal communications management style of his office were outraged at the lack of answers, time and content.
He made up for it with a longer news conference in Ottawa Thursday morning and then prolonged question answering in the Commons Thursday and Friday but still — it was not a good week.
Memo to Ritz communications staff: when the next crisis erupts, schedule the minister to stay answering questions until reporters are exhausted.
McCain did it and won kudos for his accessibility.
But back to the bad Ritz week.
He gets a break this week when the Commons is adjourned and with any luck, the recall fiasco may be abating when MPs return.
Still, Ritz really has explaining to do about the timeline, CFIA resource financing, why the Americans moved faster than the Canadians to get XL products off the market and why XL was able to get away with lackadaisical responses to CFIA de-mands for testing information.
He should hope the Commons agriculture committee holds hearings on this incident and he should hope that Conservative MPs do not simply try to protect him but let the facts come out.
As to the opposition claims that Ritz should be dismissed as minister, forget it. Prime minister Stephen Harper has generally no reason to be unhappy with the Ritz record and has proven to be a loyal boss.
