Posts Tagged ‘Pomerleau’
The lunch meat election
Posted on: September 1, 2008
What better election plank than food safety?
Fifteen Canadians dead eating tainted lunch meat, and Tony Clement, the health minister, playing Obama groupie in Denver, rather than considering the Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis crisis was crisis enough to come home to attend to. All this on the heels of government plans to cut health inspections.
Luc Pomerleau, a Canadian Food Inspection Agency biologist and union steward, was fired last month for forwarding by e-mail to his union notes made public by accident, that happened to be cabinet plans to cut government food inspection services while transferring more responsibility to the food industry.
On top of that, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz had said Pomerleau may face charges, that he was no whistleblower, that title should go to the individual who turned Pomerleau in. (The Globe and Mail link now offers up only the first paragraph, and requires the reader purchase the 410 word article.)
No issue more clearly illustrates how government can be more than uncaring, but mean-spirited and dangerous. But on top of those reports is another. The Canadian government actually lobbied to have the Americans ease up on their reportedly tougher food safety requirements for Canadian cold cut meats, including standards specific to listeria.
The Tories supporting cuts to food safety by having industry self police themselves seems to have become an election issue, and so it should be.
Tory election ads are already running. I’ve seen them on Business News Network but no one seems to be commenting on them. The ads feature a series of what seem to be on the street and in the park interviews with ordinary folks for supportive one-liners except for the bad-actor voices indicating it took a few takes to get those gee-whiz voice inflections just right. Pre-election ads with people saying they’ll vote “Harper”. Makes you wonder why media is still guessing news-wise of whether Canada is going to have an election. One seems to have been already called.
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