Agriculture committee  That is a year-over-year increase from 1,697.

Agriculture committee  These are what we call front-line staff. You're quite right. Inspection activity is a continuum. We do have folks who work in labs who are considered to be inspection staff as well. There are other folks who have more office-type jobs, who are considered inspection staff, becau

Agriculture committee  I can certainly get a number.

Agriculture committee  I would point out that because all of the inspectors in a meat processing environment will do CVS tasks, 100% of those inspectors will be trained on CVS. In a slaughter environment, not all inspectors will be doing CVS tasks, so they will not all be trained on CVS. I'll get you

Agriculture committee  We have an extensive training program for our inspectors and we continue to invest in training for our inspectors. We received funding to do that from a recent budget, along with other funds for inspection modernization activities, so there will be a very significant training pro

Agriculture committee  I certainly can.

Agriculture committee  I'll get that number for you; I have it right here. We have, as of March of this year, 1,733 meat inspectors.

Agriculture committee  It's a slight promotion, Greg. I'm the associate vice-president of operations at the Food Inspection Agency.

Agriculture committee  We are responsible. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is responsible for recruitment and for the training of the inspectors. In the last budget, in the context of the funding received for modernization, there is a tranche of that funding that will be dedicated to putting togeth

Agriculture committee  I would say we have not had a consultation specifically on the training that will be rolled out in the context of modernization. That being said, I want to be very clear that the modernization initiative, including how we propose to do changes to our regulations, etc.... There is

Agriculture committee  Thank you for that question. I think it's a bit of a multi-part answer. We certainly hear feedback about inconsistency in our inspection activities.

Agriculture committee  On a very specific issue, we will go out to the area and we'll find out what happened in that area. We have a group of specialists who I guess consider inspection activities across—

Agriculture committee  It can be within 24 hours; it can be shorter than that.

Agriculture committee  They tend to be responded to in order of priority. When we have a scenario where a line is shut down or a shipment is held up, the response is very quick.

Agriculture committee  You've given me a specific example, and I would say it would never go to six weeks if a line has been shut down.