130 years ago this week, the muckraking author Upton Sinclair was born. Sinclair is probably best known for his novel The Jungle, which documented the deplorable health and working conditions at turn-of-the-century stockyards in Chicago. So horrifyingly accurate was Sinclair’s depiction that upon reading the novel, President Teddy Roosevelt took action immediately. The result was the landmark Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which revolutionized the food inspection process in the United States. Similar action was taken in Canada, though it was not until 1997 that one mega-bureaucracy—the Canadian Food Inspection Agency—was made responsible for food safety, operating within the Ministry of Agriculture.
Sadly, it seems that some lessons must be learned the hard way. The listeria outbreak has killed 17 Canadians and hospitalized more. There is reason to believe that the contaminated meat could have been detected had the CFIA inspected food processing outlets with greater frequency. The outbreak could have been avoided, but mistakes were made and now people are suffering.
Naturally, there are some doom-and-gloom types who find other peoples’ deaths hilarious. Apparently, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz is one of them. “Death by a thousand cold cuts” is how Ritz referred to the crisis during a conference call among senior bureaucrats, according to reports. He also expressed hopes that his opposition critic was among the victims of the outbreak. Ritz has been duly lambasted as a tasteless SOB, and opposition leaders are demanding that he be fired.
But is being a tasteless SOB enough of a reason to fire someone? More specifically, is it a reason to fire Gerry Ritz?
While I’ll freely admit Ritz’s comments were in bad taste, haven’t we all, at some point in time, told an insensitive joke? Or chuckled at off-colour comments at a party? And if our friend told us the listeriosis joke, wouldn’t we laugh and then refresh our drink?
We all enjoy a little dark humor now and again. Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance; I’ll leave the explanations to the psychologists. So who are we, the tasteless-joke-tellers and off-colour-name-callers of the world, to call for Ritz’s head?
Though I’m no Harper supporter (I’d like to buy him a corned beef sandwich), I defend his decision to stand behind Ritz in the name of common sense—a bad joke is not grounds for termination. If you want to call for Ritz’s removal, focus on the real actions that could have been taken to prevent this outbreak from happening—not his questionable sense of humour.
