Unresolved -The same old issues

Liberal-loathing of the bad federal government too  is often behind almost all of the citizens complaints even that the same old issues have not been yet adequately dealt with, including Health Care, bad Politicians, bad Civil and public servants, Mad Cow, Trade disputes, Delays at the US Border, etc.

The Number of complaints against the Police in Canada in fact overall is really unbelievable still.   The overwhelming majority of complaints against the police flow from private citizens. Ontario's judge  George Ferguson  had  also urged a more transparent Police complaints process too.  Supposedly in Toronto alone In 2004, these police complaints totaled 862 . And 335 of the 862  police complaints went nowhere firstly and why?: they were deemed supposedly frivolous, inapplicable, rejected,  or were not filed within the requisite six months. How convenient for the police the six month limitations too.  Among the 527 police complaints that were investigated, accusations of discreditable conduct accounted for almost three-fifths; plus heavy-handed use of authority was the second-largest category. Incomplete data was the next majority category with more than 116 of the 527 were still outstanding when the 2004 report was written. Finally only  11/862  produced findings of  misconduct, clearly now which is too low in reality., especially when you consider that the majority at least 95 percent of the police tickets issues against the citizens tend to stick next in comparison , and how many of the police next actually got a rightfully termination, firing is another unacceptable bad issue too. Significant Citizens Complaints about bad police are a fact over 50 years old too now

Mad-cow isn't a trade issue It's first and foremost a food-safety issue  By SYLVAIN CHARLEBOIS  Friday, January 27, 2006 Globe and Mail      It's true that Canadian beef is safe – but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the beef industry are missing the point. The latest Canadian BSE case coming out of Alberta was considered by industry pundits to be unwelcome but not unexpected. This is the fourth native case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad-cow disease, in Canada since May of 2003 (excluding the one case that was discovered in the state of Washington in December of 2003, which American authorities traced back to Canada a few weeks later). Meanwhile, Japan has confirmed its 22nd case, in a five-year-old cow that died of BSE. With this new case here, a native case in the United States, and the latest case in Japan, ( The spinm doctors) CFIA has predicted that the new Canadian case will not affect trade with either Japan or the United States. Maybe so, ( or not) but consumers should at least begin to speculate about whether their welfare is even considered in the equation. Officials from CFIA are right in stating that Canadian beef is safe. BSE is not, strictly speaking, a food-safety issue. Risks are markedly low for both animals and humans in terms of contracting mad-cow or the human variant of the disease.   However, there are perceived food-safety risks associated with the disease, and BSE is arguably raising domestic and international marketing and food-safety concerns. Still, in the face of this, it remains that CFIA is not independent in its approach, and the agency, and the Canadian government, have yet to address BSE in terms of a food-safety concern, as opposed to merely a trade concern. The core of the trade issue is, after all, perceived food safety, making it the true issue, in spite of all the science that tells us our beef is safe. To begin with, in terms of addressing food safety, the agency convinced Canadians, and themselves, that the 1997 ban on ruminant-to-ruminant feed would curtail the source of the devastating neurological disease. However, the most recent case was born 32 months after the ban. Ruminant feed is still readily available on the market, and violations of the ban have been reported. Enforcing the feed restriction has been challenging for regulators. After the May, 2003, case, CFIA significantly increased its sampling for BSE testing. In 2005, the testing target was 30,000 animals, denounced by many observers as very low, considering Canada slaughters well over 2.4 million cattle every year. CFIA did end up testing almost 58,000 samples in 2005, but if this January is any indicator as to how 2006 will turn out, the number of tested samples should drop significantly from last year. By testing less than 2 per cent of all slaughtered beef in Canada, a few positive cases are bound to fall through the cracks, which can create yet a new premise for any country to issue an embargo on Canadian products, not to mention raising consumer doubts. These shortcomings in enforcing regulations and in the rigour of testing must be addressed to deal with consumers' perceptions of risk from eating beef - even though these perceived risks have very little to do with factual risks. The disease itself is sufficiently devastating, on so many levels, that rigorous testing is warranted, simply on principle. Testing should not be relegated to being merely a measure to insure uninterrupted trade. Through the mad-cow crisis, the federal government learned how to cope with political uncertainty and drive the political agenda with scientific-based facts. What seems to be lost on our government, and our beef industry, is that in the summer of 2003, both CFIA and the federal government were politically smitten with transparency and the will to return to the status quo as quickly as possible. In the process, this implied trying to manage uncontrollable variables, since the embargo was issued by political jurisdictions over which Canadian authorities have no power. And, while most beef-industry experts were focused on the short-term repercussions of BSE, the structure in which the industry operates remained unchanged. During the BSE crisis, with staff from Agribusiness Canada, CFIA's representatives lobbied to convince the U.S. government to reopen borders to Canadian cattle and beef. CFIA has proven through the BSE ordeal that it does not have the legitimacy and power to deal with marketing issues, especially when those issues encompass both trade and food-safety concerns. When Britain was hit by its BSE crisis, for example, it had to comply with strict European Union rules on food safety. It was asked to provide more accurate information to allow better trade flow between European nations. The BSE crisis itself and trading pressures eventually led the British, in 2000, to create the Food Standard Agency (FSA), an independent food-safety watchdog set up by an act of Parliament to protect public health and consumer interests in relation to food. CFIA's mandate differs somewhat from the one followed by the British agency. Although the Canadian agency has historically focused its expertise on public-health-related issues, it also has a mandate to somewhat protect the industry's interests. The British agency is led by a board, appointed to explicitly act in the public interest and not to represent particular sectors. Canada, or the United States for that matter, has never been exposed to such intergovernmental market dynamics pertaining to food safety. The need to divorce public and industry concerns on food-safety policies has been non-existent until now. As a result, there is no equivalent to the British agency in Canada or the United States, despite the model that was presented by the British experience long before native North American cases showed up. The European approach to trade and marketing through stronger food-safety guarantees has resulted in a climate more conducive to meeting both safety and trade/marketing goals in one fell swoop. The Canadian architecture for food safety policy-making, however, is legislatively inept. Canada never caught up to what changes needed to be made before 2003, and still has not caught up. The British basis, though, can apply to any nation that trades agricultural commodities internationally. Partners must present a willingness to comply with continental food-safety standards, even though legislative structures between nation-partners are fundamentally different. Clarification of CFIA's role would, at the least, allow the beef industry to better focus on marketing its products by giving consumers and trade partners confidence in the product's safety. For years, the industry has seen the domestic demand of beef in Canada steadily decline and done very little to provide consumers with new legitimate reasons to buy more beef. The "you need to buy beef to support our industry" motto will no longer work, as the immediate crisis has past. Consumers are unlikely to remain complacent about the BSE issue as more and more cases are discovered. The government, CFIA, and the industry need to work hard, employing informational and educational tactics, to ensure that Canadians, and our trading partners, make the link between discovery of more cases and increased safety. It is this link that has resurrected the European, and particularly the British, beef industries and international trade in beef and beef-products."

"Anton Berger from Kelowna, Canada writes:  this puts me in mind of a critisism of the British Gov't;that they treated their mad-cow crisis as a public relations problem, rather than a health and safety issue.as a result they lost a great deal of credibility with the public."

 

and now  where are all those federal and provincial liars now who years ago had said they were going to deal with this issue effectively too.. and I had said in writing to you all it would not go away or be resolved that quickly .. I was right here too 

 

Continued