Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Da Pont, and your officials, for being here today.
As I said earlier, XL Foods is in my riding. It's a very important facility for that community. It has roughly 2,200 workers in a city of 13,500 people. It has a huge impact on the community, as well as obviously on not just the community but the employees, the company, and the ranchers who are there. It has a huge impact.
I've had a number of opportunities to talk to the media on this matter. Something like 4,000 head of cattle go through there every day. When I think about that, Mr. Da Pont—I know that we have all those inspectors and veterinarians there—I think about the required documentation. It's absolutely huge. I tried to explain that to the media. I tried to explain to the opposition that you can't just flip a switch and everything is okay the next day.
However, I really want to talk about inspectors' powers. Those were just comments I needed to get out on the floor.
The inspectors are our front-line troops. What we want to ensure is that they do in fact have the powers. We have added, as was stated earlier, some 700 net new inspectors. It's really important for them to be able to do the job that is required of them and have a number of powers granted to them by law.
Some of those—as you mentioned, Mr. Da Point—are to examine, test, take samples, open packages, take photographs, copy computers, and move or restrict items, which we saw through the recall process. One thing the legislation does is modernize the inspection powers by, for example, explicitly allowing inspectors to take photographs, whereas before that was not specifically stated in the statutes.
Some, however, are worried that the legislation gives food inspectors too much power. I'm wondering if you could explain why this concern is unfounded.