SPP and Election '08 : From Star Wars to listeriosis

Kevin Brooker, columnist at the Calgary Herald, gets it :
Beware Government deals made secretly

"Before you go into the voting booth next week and do your part to help give Stephen Harper's Conservatives a parliamentary majority [ahem], there's something you need to think about.
With all of the structural problems in the U.S. economy, is now the time to give deep integrationalists encouragement to do what we never asked them to do in the first place?"

Mr. Brooker refers to the Con's summer release of their Competition Review Panel report "Compete to Win" , which recommends loosening up foreign investment restrictions and ending the prohibition on bank mergers.

Well just lol. The U.S. economy is tanking and we already have one of the world's most foreign dominated economies, but as usual, not U.S.-dominated/decimated enough for the North American Competitiveness Council, aka the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

Let's do a little review of "Compete to Win", in their own words, courtesy of Integrate This! :

"The chief mechanism to deal with Canada–US border issues, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), has yielded too little progress in improving crossborder flows. In this context, the Panel believes that it is imperative to intensify our bilateral effort with the US, focusing on facilitating the flow of goods, services and people across the Canada–US border"

URANIUM MINING
"The Minister of Natural Resources should issue a policy directive to liberalize the non-resident ownership policy on uranium mining..."

COMPETITION
"The Minister of Industry should introduce amendments to the Competition Act (to) align the merger notification process under the Competition Act more closely with the merger review process in the United States..."

TAXATION
"The federal, provincial and territorial governments should continue to reduce corporate tax rates to create a competitive advantage for Canada, particularly relative to the United States."

CANADA-U.S. ECONOMIC TIES
"Addressing the thickening of the Canada–US border should be the number one trade priority for Canada, and requires heightened direct bilateral engagement at the highest political levels."

REGULATION
"Canada should harmonize its product and professional standards with those of the US, except in cases where, and then only to the extent that, it can be demonstrated that the impairment of the regulatory objective outweighs the competitiveness benefit that would arise from harmonizing."


As Mr. Brooker notes :

"When these people sit down to discuss, say, environmental regulation, do you think it is to make those laws tougher?
Do you suppose they're spending much time thinking about how to preserve workers' rights?
And how about Canada's vast freshwater resources, which were specifically excluded from NAFTA. What are the chances that emergent "security" needs will put water back on the table and thus guarantee the U.S. permanent access, just like they got with our oil?"

The always wonderful Laura Carlsen, director of Americas Policy program at the Center for International Policy, answers Mr. Brooker's questions with a quote from someone who should know :

"In April 2007, on the eve of the North American Trilateral Summit, Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, described the SPP's purpose with remarkable candor: The SPP, he declared, "understands North America as a shared economic space," one that "we need to protect," not only on the border but "more broadly throughout North America" through improved "security cooperation." He added: "To a certain extent, we're armoring NAFTA."

Carlsen notes: "This was the first time that a U.S. official had stated outright that regional security was no longer focused on keeping the citizens of the United States, Canada, and Mexico safe from harm, but was now about protecting a regional economic model."

Of course the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Canadian Wing of the NACC, have not only always known this, they are very keen to take credit for the idea. From their website :

"As our Council made clear in launching our North American Security and Prosperity Initiative in 2003, it is in Canada’s fundamental interest to pursue bilateral and trilateral agreements that will keep our border with the United States as open as possible, and this requires hard work on issues related to security.
...In this context, we would restate our view that it is in Canada’s interest to participate in the ballistic missile defence program."

Oh goodie! Pudding!

And while I was over at the CCCE website perusing their "Blueprint", I ran in to this :

"In 2003, our Council proposed that the federal government adopt a “five percent solution”, which would require that each year, each minister and each deputy minister identify the least effective five percent of spending under their direction. This identification of relatively ineffective spending would provide a pool of resources that could be reallocated to new purposes if and when needed."

A 5% cut in each department's operating budget?
That sounds familiar. And voilà!

"A Canadian Food Inspection Agency employee was fired on Friday for sharing with his union information he found in a Treasury Board document that CFIA planned to make a 5% cut in its operating budget by outsourcing responsibility for food inspections and the labelling of products to industry.

It's like watching a prophecy unfold, isn't it?

The CCCE proposes something, the Cons make it flesh, and we get listeriosis.

On Oct 14, be sure you are not voting for these puddin' heads.

SPP : Outsourcing food safety to industry Pt 2

With 15 deaths out of 29 confirmed cases of listeriosis, and the 30 new cases still pending, Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors are blaming understaffing and new procedures in the privatization of food safety.

G&M : "At the Maple Leaf plant behind the listeria outbreak, a single federal inspector was relegated to auditing company paperwork and had to deal with several other plants, the manager and the union official said, contradicting the impression that officials had left last week that full-time watchdogs were on-site."

Former CFIA inspector Bob Kingston :
"Under the old system, inspectors had a more hands-on role on the plant floor, did more of the tests themselves and had more freedom to investigate.
Under the new rules, instead of heading to the plant floor to inspect with their own eyes, inspectors are sent to the office to confirm that the meat packer has performed the required tests and the results are satisfactory."
"We don't swab for listeria any more. The industry does all that themselves," he said. "They just document all this stuff. We read their reports. If their reports say they do everything fine, then they do everything fine."

"The federal rules require only that inspectors perform three or four random tests annually at a plant, Richard Arsenault, a manager at the CFIA, said in an interview. The rest of the time, inspectors rely on the company."

The Maple Leaf Toronto plant was one of the plants where the CFIA began testing the new industry-based inspection system a year ago.

Yesterday Harper and Clement moved quickly into damage control :
Harper : "I think all of us, and obviously I include my own family in this, we expect that when we shop that the things we buy or that we eat are going to be safe."
Harper cited increased resources and inspectors in the last federal budget as examples of how the government realizes it is necessary to "reform and revamp" Canada's food and product inspection processes after "some years of neglect."
"All members of government have been on top of this," Harper said.

Health Minister TonyClement :
"Government policy was to hire 200 more inspectors, that's what we've done since we achieved power in January '06," he said from the U.S. Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colo.
"When it comes to health and safety, you can't scrimp and save; you've got to do your job on behalf of Canadians and that's what we're doing."

What you're doing is privatizing food safety as outlined in the SPP and lying about it.
A government food safety scientist was fired for sending this November 13, 2007 confidential memo (warning : pdf) off to his union that states :
"reduce the need for ongoing CFIA inspection and would shift CFIA's role to oversight and industry verification" and
"shifting program delivery... (including inspection) to an industry-led third party."

The horrible irony here is that in our rush to align with the U.S., we haven't adopted U.S. food safety methods, some of which like irradiation are arguably purported to be an improvement. No, we've only adopted the privatization, allowing industry to police themselves.

Presumably a full scale government assault on CFIA for being unable to deliver under these conditions is now underway and more industry oversight will be recommended.

Outsourcing food safety to industry Part 1