A Liberal member of Parliament says he’s baffled by the Alberta United Conservative government’s response to his private member’s bill about pandemic preparedness.
The bill from Toronto MP Nate Erskine-Smith, called “an act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness,” is currently before the Senate.
The proposed legislation would require the federal health minister to create a pandemic preparedness and prevention plan in co-ordination with federal and provincial public health, manufacturing, agriculture and environmental officials.
The plan, the bill says, must include a number of strategies for reducing and responding to the risk of disease spread, ranging from boosting health-care capacity and training additional health workers to managing risk in commercial meat processing operations.
Alberta Agriculture Minister RJ Sigurdson, as well as representatives from Alberta’s pork, beef, and chicken producer associations, told a press conference last week that the bill would devastate the province’s agriculture sector and threaten food security worldwide.
“The federal government would have the discretionary power to allow public health officials to shut down facilities, like livestock operations and meat processing plants, without clear objective criteria,” Sigurdson said Thursday.
“This would disrupt meat supply chains and other agricultural operations linked to them, like feed production, which would place our role as a major food supplier at risk, threatening overall...
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