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Listerios, Ritz and a Letter from Saskatchewan
CPS Election Analysis 2008 - Week 5
Paul Beingessner (With Permission) – From Column # 687 Civil Servants Are Not the Minister's Flunkies, 22/09/08
The Globe and Mail reported on Monday September 22, 2008 that lax standards were the root cause for a rise in food recalls by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 446 this year. The Globe item reported that Canada has the “lowest standards among the United States and European Union countries governing how much exposure consumers can safely have to listeria. Eighteen Canadians have died and another 30 are seriously ill across the country.
Focus on Socialism regularly receives a newsletter from a Saskatchewan farmer with trenchant and biting commentary on problems confronting Canadian farmers with special emphasis on Saskatchewan. His last posting deserves wide circulation. We should put in our pocket, pull it out and read before we head for the polling booth on the 14th of October.
FOS Editor
Column # 687 Civil Servants Are Not the Minister's Flunkies
One of the problems with writing a weekly newspaper column is timing. If a story occurs just after you've sent in a column, your version, should you choose to write it, won't appear until about ten days later. Not so timely in some cases.
So I write about Gerry Ritz's controversial comments about listeriosis with some trepidation. By the time you read this, Gerry and his comedic performance will have faded from the news, replaced by the ongoing stream of promises from the political parties. But this one is too important to let go just yet. Like editorial writers across Canada, I want to have my say.
By now everyone has heard the story. Gerry Ritz, failed ostrich farmer and Agriculture Minister joked that the listeriosis crisis originating at Maple Leaf Foods was "death by a thousand cold cuts". He further bleated that he hoped a reported case in PEI was Liberal ag critic Wayne Easter. Ritz made the remarks on a conference call with an assortment of ministerial office people and bureaucrats from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and other departments.
The content of the call was leaked to the media by an anonymous participant, drawing a veiled threat from Stephen Harper. Woe to the fellow if found.
Calls for Ritz to resign or be terminated both as Ag Minister and as candidate were swift. Most centered on his insensitivity at a time when people were dying (eighteen to date) from the bacteria, including ultimately an elderly woman in Ritz's constituency. Ritz issued the obligatory apology, while Steven Harper focused on the embarrassment to Ritz, whom he described as the best Ag Minister ever. Secretly, Harper must have been wishing he had put the gag order on Ritz, rather than on the CWB.
Unlike those calling for Gerry Ritz to resign due to insensitivity, I don't think this is reason enough to get rid of the Minister. After all, Harper can't remove every insensitive clod in his government. The ranks would be too thin. I suspect Ritz was only practicing for a second career as stand-up comic after his political life is over. I mean, there's no future in ostriches to return to.
Don't get me wrong though. I do think Ritz should be removed from the Ag Minister post. He should be removed for incompetence. He apparently has no idea how government works, nor of the seriousness of his job.
Ritz's lack of understanding of government stems from his belief that the government of the day can do whatever it pleases. That Stephen Harper has this attitude is undeniable. Key civil servants, like the Chief Electoral Office or the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or the CEO of the CWB are terminated because they won't do what the government wants. Ritz blustered and fumed because the CWB directors and management wouldn't follow his commands. He ordered, as one example, that he be given the names of organic farmers who participated in a CWB program. When told that was contrary to privacy laws, and would not be done, he demanded the list twice more.
The Conservative government seems to believe the job of civil servants is to carry out the political agenda of the Conservative party. It is decidedly not. The job of civil servants, like those at the CFIA, is to follow the laws and regulations that are laid out in statute for the department. Ritz's ministerial officials, his political hacks, are there to do his personal bidding, however ludicrous. But there is a major distinction between his office staff and the Agriculture department. Civil servants are there to do their jobs, not to protect the Minister's behind or carry out his political whims. God help us if a government had no civil service to buffer the idiocies of members without a grain of common sense.
Not understanding this, Ritz thought he was among friends in his conference call. When he should have been receiving a briefing on the state of the listeriosis outbreak, he was obsessed with worry about the political fallout. The "death by a thousand cold cuts" remark referred to the damage to the government, which had cut inspection at meat plants. This was the focus for Ritz, who should have been concerned with dying Canadians and how to deal with and prevent such outbreaks.
His failure to understand this, to realize the life-and-death seriousness of his job is why Gerry Ritz is not fit to be Minister of Agriculture.
© Paul Beingessner (306) 868-4734 beingessner@sasktel.net |