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Canadian Liberal Leader Stephan Dion Calls for Minister's Firing After Listeriosis Scandal
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by Rob Walker | September 18, 2008 at 11:40 am
357 views | 8 Recommendations | 4 comments
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A government minister's callous statements and competency during one of Canada's worst food health crisis are on the hotspot as the national election campaign continues.
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has already apologized for jokes he made around the listeriosis outbreak, in which 12 people died. Liberal leader Stephan Dion is calling for the minister to be fired.
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz must be fired for his incompetence managing the listeriosis crisis and a dire lack of sensitivity shown to victims by making wisecracks about the outbreak.“The buck stops with him. Prime Minister Harper must take responsibility for this outrage and fire Mr. Ritz as Minister immediately,” Dion said in a prepared statement released this morning.
“We know that PMO staff were in on this conference call in which Mr. Ritz so callously joked about people dying. And yet they allowed him to continue in his role as the government spokesman for this crisis. Why?"
Stephen Harper is refusing to seek the resignation of Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz for making light of the listeriosis deaths of 17 Canadians, saying the MP's remarks were embarrassing but don't undermine his work on the matter.While terming the remarks as an “embarrassment,” Mr. Harper said Mr. Ritz had worked particularly hard on the effort to get the crisis under control.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (4)
at 12:13 on September 18th, 2008
Ritz's comments follow a similar comment by Health Minister Tony Clement, who while attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver, joked about the outbreak at a cocktail party.
"I'm Health Minister Tony Clement, and I have to say I approved this food,"
Toronto Star, August 28, 2008.
at 10:06 on September 19th, 2008
Rob Walker, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 23:03 on September 19th, 2008
Wow, Dion is now pretending to be Jack Layton; he' s not.
at 17:04 on September 21st, 2008
I actually remember watching the news on CBC when they showed Minister Ritz making the comment in a joking manner, and I thought, "Wow is this guy for real? I thought it was just crazy for him to make those statements -- he's a politician and his comments were during a conference call (i.e. bein taped) and he said it as if he were having dinner in his house and joking around! And then a couple days later, we have Harper's comments on television telling the public in essence that it was blown out of proportion since Ritz appologized and he thinks that's the end of it? Are you kidding me?!
I think after this last debacle, Harper will be keeping a tighter reign on his team for sure.