Squeal Like A Pig

 One of our true national treasures, Linda McQuaig (why has she not received an Order of Canada?) recently wrote an article detailing the abysmal conditions under which pigs await slaughter. It is a piece that should make all of us cringe, whether or not we regularly eat pork:

Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

That’s why the Canadian pork industry, sensitive about its public image, decided to eliminate the practice — a move hailed by Canada’s Humane Society as “a watershed moment for farm animals in Canada.”

This led to a rare round of positive coverage for the beleaguered industry, with the media reporting that the move would please Canadian consumers and bring Canadian animal welfare practices in line with more advanced European standards.

All that happened back in 2014. Yet, six years later, millions of pigs in Canada continue to spend their lives locked in these narrow cages — because the ban doesn’t actually come into effect until 2024.Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

In fact, that leisurely 10-year phase-in period seems about to get longer. The pork industry has decided it needs more time and has indicated its desire to grant itself a further five-year extension.

How is this possible? In a word: self-regulation, a self-regulation that is aided and abetted by the Doug Ford government, which

just made it easier for the industry to shield its operations from public view, passing legislation last month aimed at cracking down on trespassing activists and journalists who often work undercover on industrial farms in order to take photos and videos.

Those videos have done a great deal to raise public awareness of the conditions under which our food makes its way to our table:

 One undercover video, aired last month on CTV’s national investigative program W5, included graphic footage of adult pigs being hit with heavy objects and baby pigs squealing and squirming in pain as workers cut off their tails and castrate them.

Lest we be inclined to think of animals as insensate beings, consider this:

As renowned anthropologist Jane Goodall notes: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain.”

The intensity of animal emotions has been captured on videos of rescued farm animals experiencing their first taste of freedom. They run, romp and play — even enormous adult pigs — and certainly appear to be experiencing something akin to joy.

 Of course, any dog owner can confirm that animals feel emotions. And any dog owner would gasp at the thought of their dog trapped in a confining cage, 24 hours a day, unable to even turn around.

But the factory farm industry is counting on us not making the connection. And the best way to ensure that, as Doug Ford knows, is to prevent us from seeing photos of locked-up pigs looking every bit as sad and scared as our own dogs would be in those cages.

Whether we are vegetarians, vegans or regular or occasional consumers of animal flesh, it is incumbent upon all of us not only to be aware of the deplorable conditions under which our food is processed but also to demand much better both from the industry and the Doug Ford government.  

 

 

Henhouse Alert

Welcome to Ontario, A Place To Grow and Open For Business. Depending upon whether you are a private driver or a commercial operator, you will soon be sporting one of the two new mottoes on your licence plates. A small thing, you might conclude, if you are willing to overlook that the new plates will be sporting a Tory-blue colour, all part of the Ford government's branding and messaging.

However, peering beyond the obvious, these changes convey something that is not altogether benign: Come to Ontario, almighty business, and (cue the wink and the nudge) we will take good care of you.

How? Perhaps a clue is to be found in a detail released in yesterday's provincial budget:

Ontario’s Ministry of Labour will “modernize and streamline” its enforcement efforts by helping employers to “educate themselves” on their workplace obligations, according to Thursday’s provincial budget.

The move to encourage employers to be more “self-reliant” coincides with an $11 million cut to the ministry’s budget from $317 million in 2017/18 to $306.1 million this year.

Apparently, such a move is a good thing:

The ministry will develop “automated digital tools” to help employers educate themselves on employment standards so the ministry can “focus on high-risk, high-impact investigations,” the budget says.

However, Finance Minister Vic Fedelli is so proud of this change that he couldn't help but crow about what this really means:

“Ontario is once again open for business and open for jobs,” Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Thursday.

In March, the Ministry of Labour announced a new online self-audit tool for employers to replace “cumbersome paper audits” and give “job creators a simple, easy and convenient way to demonstrate they follow the rules.”

Others are not so cheery about the change:

Labour advocates have consistently argued that self-regulation does not work and that proactive workplace inspections are the best way to ensure compliance with the law.

Deena Ladd of the Toronto-based Workers’ Action Centre said that without robust enforcement, workers’ rights are “just words on paper.”

“This is basically saying to employers, we’re not going to monitor you. Employers who routinely violate the law will see this as open season.”

Anyone who thinks industry self-regulation is a good thing is clearly forgetting disasters such as happened at Lac-Mégantic, which occurred under a regulatory approach that leaves responsibility for ensuring safe operations to railroads themselves.

The U.S. has led the way in self-regulation, with catastrophic results. One need look no further than the recent crashes of two Boeing 737 Max aircraft for proof:

The tragic crashes of Boeing 737 MAX airplanes have, once again, reminded the public of the dangers of regulatory capture and industry “self-regulation.” While many were shocked to learn that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), our government’s primary airline safety regulator, essentially handed over its responsibility to certify that airplanes are safe to the manufacturers of those planes, the reality is that this model of industry self-regulation is the norm, not the exception.

The Boeing crashes are a symptom of a much broader problem plaguing our country’s regulatory agencies, which have been entrusted to protect our health and safety. These agencies have been under systemic assault by conservatives and industries that have opposed almost any new regulations for decades. They have pushed an ideology of deregulation and self-regulation that undermines our government’s ability to protect the public – all to boost private profits.

In Canada, we would be foolish indeed to think of this as a problem confined to other countries. Ineed, the new Ford budget shows that the era of the fox in the henhouse has clearly arrived in Ontario.

Guest Post: A Response To Flying Blind

Yesterday's post dealt with the announcement that a degree of self-regulation is to be conferred on the airline industry by the Trudeau government. Given the fraught history of self-regulation in this country, it is alarming news. BM, a frequent commentator, offered an analysis of the situation as well as an interesting perspective on what is driving that change. I am taking the liberty of featuring his insights as a guest post:

Well, it would certainly argue against flying Air Canada to San Fran, where the existing pilots seem to be having a tough job as it is. That second incident where the pilot ignored 6 request/orders to go around and couldn't see the flashing red light either was a doozy. The short interview I heard with the pilot, equipped with a plummy British accent, was revealing. Radio trouble. Oh yes? With at least three radios available, according to other pilots in various pilots' online forums. Not mentioned - blindness to flashing red lights from the control tower.

In a proper quality assurance system, amply documented and thus verifiable to process under an outside audit, where procedures are detailed to a very fine degree, letting the industry "run" itself is just fine. Electricity and Gas meters are inspected under this regime in Canada - I was involved in setting such a system up. In the 1990s, not now. It does require that company executives be part of the system as well, and part of the audit. Everyone has procedures they must know inside out, no excuses. There are avenues for considering improvements, and documentation of everyone's training and ability to follow the system. In other words, some shop foreman in a lousy mood cannot come in one morning and change what everyone does, just because HE/SHE feels like it, or there is a recorded miscompliance report which anyone can make without fear of retribution. Keeps 'em all sane.

When it comes to meatcutting or piloting, you are dealing with situations that are not boringly standard, like instrument testing. Turnover of personnel is highly likely in the meat business, and low wages with perhaps poor English skills only exacerbate problems with written procedures. Oversight is necessary. And pilots, well they all believe they know what's best and which SOPs they can disregard. You just have to go to the TSB's website and read accident analyses to see that.

The driving force for self-regulation in industry is no doubt driven by the same Public Service pointy-heads who cannot see the difference between an ordered industrial process and situations where the humans require continual oversight. The politicians are merely attracted by the promise of saving money given them by their public service advisers, so I cannot blame either Liberals or Conservatives myself. Politicians sometimes have trouble tieing their own shoelaces, let alone understanding anything complicated. And the average person hasn't a clue about the difference between quality inspection and quality assurance, the latter being the self-regulation system, the first where outsiders check every bit. You don't need to inspect every single widget if the process is under control. That's the way cars are made these days, with the possible exception of FCA.

Lack of commonsense is the problem. One process is not the same as another and may not be amenable to auditable self-regulation.

Flying Blind

Many will recall that during the Harper era, our country moved toward greater self-regulation in various industries, often with disastrous results. From tainted meat to railway disasters, the lesson is clear: leaving safety up to the corporate sector, whose prime directive is to maximize profit for their shareholders, is a dangerous gamble with the health and lives of Canadians.

Now the neoliberal Trudeau government is taking a page out of the Harper agenda, a move that will put those who fly at greater risk.

Transport Canada is planning to stop evaluating pilots who perform checks on their counterparts at the country’s largest airlines and will instead give the responsibility to the operators, a change critics say erodes oversight and public safety.

The current practice of having Transport Canada evaluate those pilots who evaluate other pilots in the airline industry will stop as of April 1 for airlines with planes that fly more than 50 passengers. This, as reported today, is a drastic departure from accepted practices in other countries, which stipulates that pilots be evaluated twice a year.

Greg McConnell, chairman of the pilots association, said the changes are pushing Canada’s aviation safety system onto the industry itself.

“I think it’s very, very important that people understand we are getting closer to self-regulation all the time.” he said in an interview. “It’s just more cutting, more dismantling of the safety net.”

The safety compromise inherent in this decision is not going unnoticed:

New Democrat MP Robert Aubin, the committee’s other vice-chair, said the decision was “curious” because Transport Canada said it was doing more oversight, not less.

“I have concerns if the pilots who evaluate their pilots are not evaluated by Transport Canada. We have to have the same standards,” he said in an interview. “We have to increase the resources at Transport Canada to make sure we can do that job.”

For the Star article carrying this story, no Liberals were available for comment, hardly a surprise given the shameful nature of their decision here.

The fear of progressive taxation that the current government has shown seems to working its way through the system. It cannot be a comforting thought for those planning their next trip by air.

Where Do People Stand In The Harper Hierarchy?

The answer would seem to be, "Nowhere near the top." As discussed in yesterday's post on CETA, leaked documents confirm that Canadian sovereignty, something all citizens should have a right to expect, will continue the erosion that began under NAFTA. Specifically, the dispute-settlement mechanism that enables investors to sue governments when they pass legislation that impairs their ability to make profits (as in environmental regulations, drug regulation, etc.) will be a centre-piece. As well, Canadian governments on every level will see their efforts to locally source good and services severely curtailed.

The corporate state has clearly arrived.

But its arrival affects other areas of our lives, not the least of which is public safety. Industry self-regulation has accelerated under the Harper regime, in part a response to trade liberalization but also a reflection of an ideology which believes government involvement in the affairs of state and commerce should be minimal. Hence the disasters of Walkerton, Maple Leaf Foods, etc. Air disasters, god forbid, seem likely in the future as well due to changes at Transport Canada.

Then of course, there was the entirely preventable tragedy of Lac-Mégantic, which recently observed the one-year anniversary of the deaths of 47 people and the destruction of a significant portion of the town.

Despite those grievous losses, third-party proprietary rights are being invoked as the reason we Canadians cannot know the specifics of that massive failure of safety. As reported in today's Toronto Star, the paper's access-to-information requests resulted in only some information being released:

Safety inspections of the rail company implicated in the Lac-Mégantic train disaster found defective equipment, problems with locomotives, and sections of rail lines so rundown trains could not exceed speeds of 10 miles per hour.

But Transport Canada is blocking the release of information detailing the majority of the problems and their severity, saying the inspection reports cannot be provided in full because the information is “third-party” — confidential, and belonging to the rail company — or was prepared or obtained in the course of an investigation.

[T]he majority of the more than 1,000-page compilation of inspection documents was withheld or heavily censored.

These inspections, by the way, were not performed by Transport Canada, but by the railway company's own crews.

The unredacted portion received by The Star is damning enough:

- employees told investigators the company was using poorly maintained locomotives, and that instead of repairing worn train tracks, ... the company just lowered the speed limit.

- the company performed minimal maintenance on locomotives, and said locomotive 5017 (the one that caused the disaster) was in particularly poor condition.

- Transport Canada repeatedly flagged safety concerns and non-compliance with rail standards by the now-defunct company

Equally disturbing is the fact that the rail companies establish their own safety management protocols:

The arrangement allows rail companies to draft and enforce their own safety regimes, which are then audited by Transport Canada. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is considered third-party proprietary information, and hence the embargo on truth about the disaster.

All Canadians should be outraged by yet another failure on the part of the Harper regime to protect its citizens while simultaneously extolling and elevating the world's corporate denizens.

Industry Self-Regulation - Another Update

Last week I wrote two posts on the Harper regime's ideological decision not to impose mandatory reporting of drug shortages on the pharmaceutical industry. The government instead has placed its market-driven faith on a voluntary system, with results nearly as disastrous as those in Canada's food industry, which also enjoys a high degree of autonomy from government oversight. Hopefully, the debacle of XL Foods has not yet faded from public memory.

Today's Star reports yet another dire consequence of forsaking the protection of public health in favour of fealty to the private sector:

The last time Alena Rossnagel walked on her own, it was following long-awaited kidney surgery in April 2011.

A drug shortage had forced her to use a substitute antibiotic in the final two weeks leading up to her procedure. But the substitute left her legally blind, caused severe inner ear damage and forced her to rely on a walker.

“I was left with this body that couldn’t do anything,” Rossnagel said from Portage la Prairie, Man. “The new ‘normal’ has become the use of a walker, no driving, being cognitively impaired, hearing loss, visual impairment and myriad of other symptoms.”

The drug that she had been taking to treat a persistent infection was Trimethoprim, but in the weeks leading up to her surgery a shortage developed, and she was given Gentamicin, known for its toxic side effects. Probably the most disturbing aspect of this tale is that neither her doctor nor pharmacist had advised her of an impending shortage of her drug of choice. Says Rossnagel:

...if there had been a mandatory system to report drug shortages in April 2011, “I would be a normal person, I wouldn’t be living in this totally bizarre other world.”

As I wrote in my earlier posts, Health Canada had strongly advised against a voluntary, as opposed to mandatory system of drug-shortage reporting. But due to the inertia/incompetence/ideology of the Harper government, people like Rossnagel must pay the consequences.

The final ugly truth is perhaps best summed up by Health Canada spokesman Sean Upton, who said it was the responsibility of the drug maker to make the post online, but that if they don’t, there is no legislation that can punish a drug company if they don’t.

Just one more indication, I suppose, of how the Conservative Government of Canada really feels about the people it 'serves.'

Industry Self-Regulation - An Update

Yesterday I wrote a post about the plight of Ryan Harrington, the young man who, were it not for a drug called Celontin, would suffer upwards of 200 seizures a day. Because the Harper regime opted for a voluntary system instead of a law requiring companies to report drug shortages, Harrington had only a one-week supply of the drug left.

The Toronto Star today reports that his family has been able to secure a one-month supply of the drug from the U.S., no thanks to our government. Says Brigitte Harrington, Ryan's mother:

“It’s a band-aid” ... “We’ve applied another band-aid to the layer. We have not addressed the problem. We have not cleaned up the mess.”

Despite the shortage, Health Canada denied three separate applications from Harrington to acquire the drug from the U.S.

When asked why the first three requests were denied, Health Canada spokesperson Sara Lauer responded, “Initial requests … were not fulfilled because the manufacturer, ERFA, informed Health Canada the product would be on the market until December 2012 and it was working to avoid any potential back-order.”

I would like to think that our political 'leadership' has learned something from this episode, distressing in its wider implications, but experience suggests that in the battle between marketplace ideology, so beloved of the Harper regime, and the public good, we the people are pretty much on our own.

Industry 'Self-Regulation'

In a world rife with the environmental, economic and social consequences of unfettered capitalism, the term 'industry self-regulation' has always struck me as little more than a oxymoron. Examples abound of what happens when government regulatory agencies enter into what turn out to be Faustian bargains with the corporate sector, the sad case of XL Foods perhaps the one most prominent in recent memory.

Today's Star exposes yet another failure of corporate oversight as it reports on the plight of Ryan Harrington, a young man afflicted with a severe form of epilepsy that, without the proper medication, leads to upwards of 200 seizures a day. Unfortunately, he has just a seven-day supply left of the only drug that limits his episodes to three per day, Celontin. The blame for his plight must rest solely on the shoulders of Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and the ethos that her government embraces

Because she opted for voluntary instead of mandatory reporting of drug shortages by the pharmaceutical industry, Harrington faces his dire situation. This, despite the fact that Health Canada staff warned that a voluntary system would be “susceptible to bad company behaviour.”

Why is this failure to report the drug shortage so crucial in Harrington's situation? Had his family known, they could have applied for special access to the drug, which is still produced in the U.S.

As is so often the case today, it is the journalistic integrity of The Toronto Star that has brought this issue to the public's attention. A followup editorial, which I hope you will take time to read, makes a compelling case for mandatory reporting:

A comprehensive, up-to-date system providing early warning of drug shortages would give hospitals, doctors and provincial health ministries a head start on finding alternatives and developing strategies for coping with what's to come. Forewarned is forearmed. So it doesn't make sense from a public health perspective to give manufacturers a penalty-free choice on whether or not to comply.

Not something those ideologues possessed of 'terminal certitude', to borrow a phrase used by Owen over at Northern Reflections, may want to hear, but nonetheless a necessary measure for the rest of us.