Agriculture committee  One of the objectives of this bill is to encompass all elements of the food industry. I must confess that we have not screened the bill to the nth degree to be able to answer correctly for ourselves that yes, everything is covered. We know some critical sectors are covered that weren't covered, but that's the objective.

Agriculture committee  Yes, he's an inspector of the CFIA, and he's recognized as that. We're not trying to slow it down. I think the answer we gave to Mr. Allen has already addressed some of that. To more specifically address your concern, you are saying that the inspector has reason to believe he's part of the CFIA and that, therefore, he can act.

Agriculture committee  I think that you're overreacting to the process that we're asking to be put in place. If you ask most inspectors, they would agree with us. They would like to have some comfort when they're taking action. You may think that inspectors will do this, but I'll tell you right now that, as a result of the incident, there has been a lot of hesitation among inspectors to do things because of the consequences that flow from their actions.

Agriculture committee  Industry is very high on benchmarking. I don't think we would have any problem at all with doing something we should have done five years ago, which is to figure out how many resources we need to ensure safety of our food products here in Canada. The sooner that's done, the better.

Agriculture committee  That particular approach is in place for meat and poultry. In other words, we cannot import any meat or poultry products from any other country unless the CFIA has approved their inspection system. In some cases, if the system gives them some cause for problems in certain areas, the plant also would have to be inspected by CFIA before it can be done.

Agriculture committee  In industry we're not interested in layering, bureaucracy and paperwork, so don't think that this is a request to do that. All we're asking is that the inspector, who obviously already has some thoughts in his mind, put those thoughts on paper and make them available, probably to his supervisor in the office at headquarters, so that they're filed there.

Agriculture committee  This is certainly not clear in the bill, and that's why we're asking you to look at it. First of all, the way the bill is written, certainly in the French version, it seems like an inspector, on his own, can make a decision whether he needs to access a company computer. He simply walks around the plant, looks at things, and says, “I think there's something wrong here.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's well put, I think, but we need to back up to your starting point. That is the idea that imported food coming into Canada right now is not inspected as much or is somehow under less control. That's not accurate. And we didn't say that either. I'll try to explain it to you.

Agriculture committee  No.

Agriculture committee  What Lucky is talking about is the current meat inspection regime, and we definitely have a very strong protocol in place to deal with that. What this bill tries to address is how we should deal with imports other than meat and poultry. I don't think it would be appropriate, and science would tell us that, to take the same approach as we do with meat and poultry.

Agriculture committee  You're right on; you're thinking in the right direction. I can tell you that I was in a plant in Europe, in Holland actually, not so long ago. There I saw technology work really well. They could trace the chicken that came into that plant from the grower who produced that chicken all the way through to the part that was sold in the supermarket.

Agriculture committee  Yes, that's the objective of the bill, madam. The bill will give the CFIA powers that it does not now have to license importers. Currently, the importers of meat and poultry products are pretty well regulated by the CFIA, but the imports of most other foods in Canada are not regulated to the same extent.

Agriculture committee  Yes. That's certainly one of the difficulties we have with the current approach. The training has been very commodity-specific. As a result, the food industry in Canada and I think Canadians in general are starting to realize that we need to treat all food the same, and that is a bit of a problem because of the structure we've developed.

Agriculture committee  I'm going to ask my chair to make the opening comments.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  That's probably the number one question we had at the partnership right from the beginning, how to benchmark, because as you make more people aware of food safety, the incidents relating to food safety also increase because people become more aware and they therefore report. It's a double-edged sword.