A worker clad in protective clothing sprays down equipment at the Maple Leaf Foods facility in Toronto during the 2008 listerosis crisis. A report on the outbreak will be made public on Tuesday. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press)

An investigator's report into last summer's deadly bacterial outbreak won't be censored before it's released to the public on Tuesday, says the Prime Minister's Office.

Sheila Weatherill, who headed a probe into the Canadian listeriosis crisis, has handed in her report to Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.

It assesses how the federal government responded to the crisis in which 22 people died and hundreds more fell ill after eating contaminated deli meats linked to a Maple Leaf Foods plant in Toronto.

Investigator Sheila Weatherill has denied there was any interference in her listeriosis probe. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Weatherill is scheduled to hold a news conference Tuesday in Ottawa to discuss her findings.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the document won't be edited or altered in any way before it is released.

"We're looking at the report right now and she'll present it to the public tomorrow," Kory Teneycke said Monday.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter, the party's agriculture critic, demanded Weatherill's report and all accompanying documents be made public immediately.

"We have concerns about this because of the way this government has handled this matter since Day 1," he said in a statement.

"The report from the government's hand-picked investigator, with a limited mandate conducted in private, is not sufficient. They have roadblocked any attempts to provide more transparency about the events of last summer."

Weatherill has denied there was any interference with her probe.

The report will not express findings of criminal or civil liability, but it will make recommendations on how to prevent similar outbreaks.

Weatherill and her team conducted more than 100 interviews and amassed five million pages of information during their six-month probe.

Closed-door meetings

The investigators held closed-door meetings with cabinet ministers and their top aides, senior bureaucrats, various experts, and industry and consumer groups.

Secrecy shrouded their work. Weatherill only once spoke publicly when she appeared in April before MPs on a special panel studying food safety.

Afterwards, reporters had to chase her through the corridors of Parliament's Hill's West Block just to get her to clarify that she had not yet questioned Ritz.

She has refused to grant interviews. The government has retained the firm National Public Relations to keep journalists at bay.

So far only dribs and drabs have trickled out. Michael Doyle, a listeria expert who advised Weatherill during the investigation, said the report looks at both the outbreak itself and more generally at food safety in Canada.

"What I've seen, I think, is a pretty good, balanced report," he said.

"I think it does a pretty good job of addressing the issue of the day, which is listeriosis and Maple Leaf product."

Rick Holley, a food safety expert at the University of Manitoba, met Weatherill this spring in her office at Ottawa's Experimental Farm.

Investigator 'very conscientious'

"I still have the impression she's being very conscientious in exploring issues that are somewhat broader than just the specific listeriosis event," he said.

Weatherill is delivering her report four months past the original March 15 deadline set when Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised an "arm's-length" investigation last September.

Since then, a half-dozen listeriosis reports have been released.

The unwritten conclusion of reports by Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Public Health Agency of Canada is that poor co-ordination among governments and agencies over food safety is putting Canadians at risk.

The Ontario government released its own post-mortem rapping the knuckles of federal and provincial health authorities for failing to work together during the outbreak.

A House of Commons subcommittee studying food safety couldn't reach a consensus after hearing from dozens of witnesses this spring, so it released two dissenting reports.

Opposition MPs called for a public inquiry into the outbreak, while the smaller number of Conservative MPs on the panel made no mention of an inquiry in their report and pledged to await Weatherill's findings.