The Hill: The listeriosis crisis - a PR disaster for the Tories

Sunday, October 5, 2008

The government's handling of the fatal meat product recall was in sharp contrast to that of the Maple Leaf CEO, who was available. Contrite, precise and apologetic

by BARRY WILSON

The fatal meat product recall crisis that overtook Maple Leaf Foods and the Canadian food inspection and safety system in August represented a case of political controversy and events on the ground converging to create a political hurricane.

In the eye of the hurricane was Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain, who followed, and perhaps wrote, the book on good crisis communication.

He was available, contrite, precise and apologetic.

He outlined remedial plans and took full blame for the incident, deflecting criticism from the regulators.

He said that, until the food safety crisis was over, he was not listening to lawyers talking about liability or accountants talking about losses.

And one day, as he took questions at a live broadcast news conference, an aide could be heard suggesting the session be ended. McCain said, in effect, I'll stay here until the questions end.

Scripted or not, it was a brilliant and effective corporate performance. Unfortunately for the federal government, the same cannot be said for the response from Ottawa.

To its credit, as the death count rose and questions about food safety grew, the government made agriculture minister Gerry Ritz, as well as senior Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Public Health Agency officials, available on an almost daily basis. But their responses were often defensive, opaque and less than compelling. They were constantly behind the story, responding rather than defining.

It was unfortunate because the government had a story to tell, but it consistently let the critics formulate the question and then the answer.

At the centre of the storm was a key question for government managers and regulators. Have the deregulating Conservatives dismantled essential aspects of the food inspection system, thus allowing the listeriosis outbreak? Was this a national repeat of the Walkerton tainted water scandal that killed and maimed consumers and was attributed in part to provincial Conservative deregulation?

Since key members of the Mike Harris government now serve as ministers in Stephen Harper's Ottawa, critics and Opposition MPs were quick to make the connection.
Critics consistently insisted Canada's regulators were too subservient to industry complaints that regulations were too onerous and more stringent than their American rules.

Thankfully, they found it too unwieldy to call this Listeriosisgate, but the reference to "Walkerton" was prevalent. The confluence of events was one of those gifts that political critics can only dream of.

In July, a CFIA union steward found on an accessible website a cabinet document outlining proposals for food inspection cuts and more of a role for industry in food inspection.

Instead of confronting the issue directly by discussing the proposals, their implications and why this was not a threat, the Conservatives fired the CFIA employee and refused to make the document public with an explanation. In fact, the Conservatives have increased staff and resources for the CFIA and the idea of passing more responsibility to industry with CFIA as oversight has been around since Eugene Whelan.

The government chose to bluster instead of explain. "Trust us" is not a good communications credo for the 21st Century.

Then came the listeriosis outbreak and critics quickly linked it to the still secret cabinet memo. It took the Conservatives days to note that the memo was about slaughter facilities and not meat processing plants, but the critics' seed had been planted.
It was an unnecessary public relations disaster for the government that could have been largely averted by more proactive communication about the food inspection system, what is being done and what is not.

The only good news for the Conservatives in this was that critics didn't really catch onto the fact that through bureaucratic boneheadedness, funding for on-farm food safety programs in 2008-09 during the transition from Agricultural Policy Framework programs to Growing Forward is being cut by 40 per cent, much to the dismay of on-farm food safety advocates.

It is easy to imagine how the critics would have made this part of Listeriosisgate as well. BF

Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing
in agriculture.