Campaign notes

Gerry Ritz should be fired, once again. News of still more egregious deregulatory steps taken under these Conservatives on food safety:

Four months before the Maple Leaf outbreak started claiming lives, Canada's food safety agency quietly dropped its rule requiring meat-processing companies to alert the agency about listeria-tainted meat, a Toronto Star/CBC investigation has found.

Twenty people died as a result of the outbreak this past summer, and federal meat inspectors and their union say this rule change likely made the country's listeria outbreak far worse than it had to be.

Before April 1, if a company preparing meat for sale to the public had a positive test showing listeria it "would have had to have been, not only brought to the (federal) inspector's attention, but the inspector would have been involved in overseeing the cleanup," says Bob Kingston, head of the union that represents Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) inspectors.

Kingston and four veteran inspectors interviewed for this story fear the change, part of the deregulation of Canada's food safety net, continues to pose a public health threat.

The inspection agency confirmed to the Star/CBC that there is currently no onus on companies to alert inspectors about positive bacterial results. The change came as part of a federal decision to allow companies to write their own food safety plans, with federal approval. (emphasis added)

Where is the accountability for the disastrous set of changes that the Conservatives ushered in?

More details in the Star today on the attacks in Parkdale-High Park.

Harper will insult the voters by releasing his campaign platform tomorrow, one week before voting day. Why so early, Steve? It's not like we've been having a campaign or anything...

On Question Period yesterday, both Jean Lapierre and Antonia Maioni confidently predicted that Michael Fortier's chances in Vaudreuil-Soulanges are abysmal at this point. "Dead in the water," said Lapierre. Fortier, the star candidate with all that money to spend can't buy a seat. Lapierre also pointed out the lack of a team that Harper has been able to recruit in Quebec, suggesting another factor, beyond the arts cuts and controversial youth justice policies, that has harmed the Conservative campaign there. Reminding us all that the overblown image of Harper as a great leader is nonsense. Good leaders attract talent and aren't threatened by it.

One other note from that session, both Lapierre and Maioni confirmed there is little to no prospect of the NDP picking up any more seats in Quebec beyond the one they hold in Outremont.

This guy nailed it on what it must be like for Harper at the moment, having spent billions in federal spending leading up to this election, millions on defaming his principal opponent and yet seeing his numbers decline back to minority territory with his own personal numbers sliding as well.

Also noted a new Harper ad last night, talking about this being no time to take risks with the plans of the opposition, etc. Since Dion turned the risk question back onto Harper in the French debate, "You're the risk," and much of the discussion in the election now is on Mr. Harper's leadership, this seems like a, for lack of a better word, "risky" ad for Mr. Harper to run. Him telling us we can't risk someone else begs the question of whether he is risk free. The answer to that is a resounding no.