Madam Speaker, this hon. member always votes for food safety for Canadians and I think that has been abundantly clear.
There is money to hire the first 70 inspectors; that is actually last year's money. That has been approved. The bottom line is the government does not have the 70 yet and the government has not done the compliance verification system, the CVS, that Ms. Weatherill said was the absolute critical component of all the things it needed to do. The commitment by the minister last fall was to have it done by January. In March it was to be done by May. In May, according to the CFIA's website and its report to the minister, we might get it by September.
Without the CVS actually being done and completed and making sure we know what it is, there is no way to know how many inspectors we actually need. The 170 may be a lowball number. We might need 207. Unless the Conservatives do the very thing that they hired the administrator to do who told them this is what they should do, and they have paid for that already, they will never know how many they need.
As for the actual number of 538, the agreement between Ms. Weatherill and the CFIA is that 170 are needed in meat inspection alone, not out there checking on cross-pollination of some sort of plant that has come from Southeast Asia, or some sort of insect that showed up in a cargo van. That is what they do, important tasks. We need 170 meat inspectors but they are not out there. There is money for at least 70 without the estimates, but the government has not been able to get it done.
My question clearly is, where is the member in getting the next 35 applicants?