Where the Buck is Gerry Ritz?

“The buck stops here.”

That was the famous phrase on the plaque on the desk of President Harry S. Truman.  Simply put, Truman’s plaque says that “I am responsible.”

What do you think the plaque on Stephen Harper’s desk says?  How about the ones on the desks of his Ministers?

Maybe they say “Shh..it rolls downhill”?

With the recent E. coli outbreak from meat processed at the XL Foods plant you would expect the Agriculture Minister to be front and centre to ensure the situation is handled quickly and correctly.  Gerry Ritz, other than a quick statement is M.I.A.  Shhh.

It appears that the only thing the Harper Government has to say is that there were 46 inspectors at the plant.

Any bets on who gets hung out to dry on this one?  I’m betting on the inspectors.

Gerry Ritz isn’t going to lose a dollar over this.  He’ll still get his pay.  The workers at the XL Foods plant will be out until this is cleared up.  Two weeks is the last I heard, just long enough to get their waiting period in for EI.

The bosses at XL Foods aren’t likely to miss a paycheque over this either I imagine.

Who will get it in the teeth are the two groups at the ends of the food chain.

The cattle farmers are stuck with a backup at the meat plants.  They’re already seeing a drop in the value of their cattle if they can get them to market at all.  Large cattle farms may do okay but the smaller family farmers will struggle to stay afloat.

The other group to get hit will be the consumers.  The middle men will get fat because there will be around 30% less beef available and they’ll just up their cut and we’ll pay for it.

I think what frustrates me the most is the Harper Party echo boxes saying things like “its only 10 people who got sick” as if that’s not a big deal. What if it was your kids that got sick, or your Meemaw?  It would likely be a big deal then.

Look, we rely on the government to ensure our food network is safe.  The government through its agencies like the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) are supposed to monitor the meat packers to prevent things like this from happening.  When it happens, it is their job (both the CFIA and the Government) to react and set a corrective action in place.

Here is a timeline of what occurred and when from the Vancouver Sun.

On September 4th there was E. coli found in trimmings by both the CFIA and their US counterparts. On September 6th CFIA asked for test results and distribution information for August 24th, 28th, and September 5th. On September 7th CFIA formally requested detailed information to product details, distribution, sample results, and information on the plant’s preventative controls. On September 13th the US Food Safety and Inspection Service finds 2 more E. coli samples and the CFIA removes XL Foods from the list of companies eligible to export to the US. On September 16th CFIA and XL Foods start issuing health hazard alerts regarding the E coli contamination found in some XL Foods products. On September 25th Alberta Health Services tell the CFIA that it has linked 4 illnesses to steaks purchase at and Edmonton Costco store.  CFIA asks Health Canada for a health risk assessment and that results in a recall of steaks from that particular store. On September 27th CFIA temporarily suspends the operating licence of the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alberta. Link to Vancouver Sun Story Oct 2, 2012.

Note that it took two full weeks from when the CFIA decided that XL Foods’ beef wasn’t fit for US consumption that they decided that it wasn’t good for Canadians to eat either.  And they were still processing 4,000 head of cattle each day until the 27^th.

Obviously the system failed.  XL Foods failed to maintain proper cleanliness to prevent this from happening.  The CFIA failed to stop this from happening as well.

But the system is the one that the Harper Party put in place.

Think back to the Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak.  Part of the cause was determined to be the reduction in inspectors by the Harper Government.  The corrective action was the system that is now in place.  The one implemented by Stephen Harper and Gerry Ritz.

The added inspectors they talk about are the replacements for the same inspectors that they had just gotten rid of.

Even then the inspectors were warning that the amount of paperwork they had to do was cutting into the amount of time they spent actually inspecting.  They saw this coming, the Harper Government ignored their warnings

This brings us back to Harry S. Truman’s buck.

The system that is in place today is the one that Gerry Ritz signed off on.  The same system that failed and put the lives of countless Canadians at risk of illness and death at the hands of a little bug called E. coli.

If Gerry Ritz is unwilling or unable to stand in the House of Commons and defend his failed system and show Canadians why he should be the Minister of Agriculture then he should step down.  If he doesn’t, then Stephen Harper needs to take action and move Gerry Ritz to the back benches and place a competent manager into the Agriculture portfolio.

Where does the buck stop boys?  Shall we honour the time tested Harper Party technique of pointing fingers at everyone else or will you man up for once and deal with the issue you helped to create?

It’s Thanksgiving time here, we should be thankful that only a small number of people became sick enough to require hospitalization due to E. coli poisoning.  Who knows how many more just thought that they were suffering from a case of the flu.

I wonder, are unreported illnesses just as real as unreported crimes?

Lord Stephen, Promise Made, Promise Kept

Apparently the Harperistas have a new line.

“Promise made, promise kept.”

I’m sure the PMO thought long and hard to dream this up before sending out to the trolling class of Harperistas. You know the ones, they post an op/ed and get all annoyed when it gets challenged. Calling people names and being rude because it was in the National Post and so it has to be true or Ezra Levant wrote it so it cannot be challenged… note to the Harper Party chattering classless… op/eds are opinions and carry no more weight than a blog by a cranky old cat and Ezra is an overfed sparrow fart that will write anything for anyone who pays enough. Kind of like prostitution isn’t it?

I write for me.

Now the last time I saw this buzz phrase PMPK was in regards to the impending closure of the Canadian Wheat Board. These junior league Harper Party operatives are all aglow with the news that their Lord Stephen has beat up a bunch of farmers and is rewriting the laws to do it. They think this is wonderful.

I would suggest that the Harper Regime is doing the same type of thing that the despots running the Middle East have been doing for the last few decades. Breaking the existing laws and just writing new ones making whatever they want to do legal.

Government control of the media? New law. Easy peasy. Just pull a string and all the Harper Party marionettes raise their hands and say “Aye.”

Somewhere Orwell is laughing at us.

Now the junior leaguers are not so happy about the class action lawsuit over the properties owned by the CWB and lost income and so forth. The evil ring leader is an immoral LIEberal. Could be, but he’s a member of the Canadian Wheat Board and a citizen of Canada and he appears to be within his rights to sue.

When Ritz got his marching orders from the PMO over this I’m sure I’m not the only one who saw the lawsuits coming fast and furious. The irony is that the very same farmers who wanted the CWB killed will be first in line to get their hands on the spoils should the class action suit prevail. Isn’t Ritz a grain farmer? Think he’ll send that cheque back uncashed?

No, the only problem is that if the government loses, it won’t be the Harper Party footing the bill. It will be a cranky old cat and the rest of Canadians paying for Harper’s folly. If there was true justice in this land the lawsuit would have named Harper and Ritz and the Harper Party and every last one of the puppets that supported this bill accountable for every red cent.

But it’s the Government of Canada that’s doing this, and so it’s the Government of Canada that gets named in the lawsuit.

And win or lose, we get to pay for the lawyers.

Let’s face it, Canadians have hired the most incompetent manager on the earth to run our country. When the situation in Attawapiskat arose our fearless leader looked surprised and astounded about this. Basically the response was “We sent the cheque, what did they spend it on?” followed by blaming the Indians for spending it on stuff. A competent manager wouldn’t have to ask.

These same guys are still planning to buy the jets that may never be made, much less fly. Plan B will be to blame the Liberals for buying the planes.

No, when Stephen Harper wanders off into the sunset after his time in office, we will be holding the bag. Billions of dollars of debt, gutted social services screaming to be rebuilt without a penny in the coffers and who knows what else and we will pass it on to our children because we won’t be able to pay for it ourselves.

That is the promise we’ll get to keep.

Support the Canadian Wheat Board

What happened to Minister Ritz?

Last week he was telling farmers that their Canadian Wheat Board plebiscite meant nothing.  Now he is quiet.  Is this part of the strategy?  Did someone higher up yank on his choke chain?

Maybe, just maybe the fools on the Hill have realized they stirred a hornet’s nest.

Maybe.

Maybe they think if they become quiet, the farmers will become quiet.  Please don’t become quiet.  Keep their feet to the fire, let them know they are accountable to the people and the people will push back.

In his interview Minister Ritz said that farmers could keep the CWB, but now I find that’s not true.  You might be able to try and gather up the pieces after it gets blown up, but there will be others grabbing for the pieces too, I don’t see a good future for the family farm on the prairie, and this bothers me.

So why does a Cat in Ontario care?  I see this as an injustice against family farms on the prairies.  We all need to stand with you on this.  If the government was truly interested in helping they would be in serious talks about how to address this issue and how it can be resolved.  Not trying to destroy 70 years of cooperation, 70 years of success.

Isn’t that what Canadians do?  We work together for the betterment of the whole.  At least we used to.  And we look out for the other guy.

I include a link.  If you have not already shown your support for the farmers of the Canadian Wheat Board, this link will take you to a petition asking that the farmers be given the choice of what happens to the CWB.  Support the farmers, they support you.

https://www.cwb.ca/db/corp/petition.nsf/onlinepetitionWeb?OpenForm

It is the least that we can do.

My thanks to Shelley Cooper-Stephenson for the link.  I am using it without permission, I hope you don’t mind.

Edit.. I need to add another link.  This will send a message to the Agriculture Minister and your MP letting them know that you support the CWB farmers.

https://www.cwb.ca/db/corp/respectplebisciteemail.nsf/SubEmailWeb?OpenForm