Agriculture committee  My group, right now, is fairly cynical about that sort of thing. The first thing they would say, for example, is that if you're willing to stop the tax breaks for oil companies that are setting record profits, they might think about it. If you're willing to stop tax breaks for ba

Agriculture committee  Well, I'm saying, at this point the question is—

Agriculture committee  My members would roast me alive if I said that, because they believe the entire premise is false. They believe it's an internally manufactured freeze, which was totally unnecessary. For me to talk about that, when they see the government wasting money somewhere else instead of pu

Agriculture committee  For domestically produced product?

Agriculture committee  Yes. One of the things you have to remember is that a lot of countries around the world have regulations similar to ours about chemical and pesticide use, but they don't enforce them. Here we do. If you're growing produce in any Canadian province, you've got the Pest Control Pro

Agriculture committee  As I touched on, one of the problems with accepting equivalency inspections is not that we have a problem with what comes out of the plant on the other side, but we're finding infractions in the shipping, in terms of the state the commodity is kept in—everything from temperature

Agriculture committee  We're required to document that we have inspected, and we certify products leaving the country as meeting the standards of the foreign country, so in terms of diseases--

Agriculture committee  They certify everything that comes to Canada. We certify everything that goes out. It's what happens when you inspect imports on behalf of the country that's receiving them. One of the things you have to recognize is when you inspect a product going out, you inspect it at sourc

Agriculture committee  Correct.

Agriculture committee  If you want to get into a debate about the economy in general and where the money comes from, sure.

Agriculture committee  I appreciate your concern, but it would take a more wholesome look at the entire economic picture, and I'd be glad to do that with you.

Agriculture committee  It varies commodity by commodity. For example, certain root crops come into the country from offshore that are looked at at a 30% level because they are considered a higher risk--not for human health and safety, and they're not evaluated for pesticide residue, but they're evaluat

Agriculture committee  That's absolutely correct. As I said, some trend monitoring goes on. We have people who go around to stores and pick fruit off the shelves, send it in for analysis. But by the time the results come back, it's usually months after, and it helps establish what they're going to targ

Agriculture committee  What I can tell you is that over the years we have seen numbers go up. However, when we canvass the work sites, those are not resulting in people in the field.

Agriculture committee  They have recently, but it was only after considerable pressure. As a matter of fact, even after the listeriosis increase in funding, that didn't even begin to happen until about a year and a half afterwards--