Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Mayers.
I don't want to get into the horse slaughter issue to a great extent, just the transportation side of it. But there has been some pretty damning coverage on the transport in, and slaughter of, horses slated for slaughter for human consumption—horses coming in from the United States and meat exported out of the country to other international markets.
So I want to deal with the transportation side of that, and to begin, I'd say that CBC documentary was not good stuff. I was shocked by it, and it's a pretty damning documentary. But off the top, I want to say that I would expect that plant was the exception and not the rule, because what I know of CFIA is that you do good work in terms of human health and safety and in terms of care of animals, as a rule.
So I have two questions. First, in terms of the water and feed to those horses coming from the United States, were they watered and fed according to the rules?
Second, as a spinoff question to that, we ship a lot of livestock from Prince Edward Island now to the U.S. and to Ontario, long distances. What happens in terms of feed and water for that livestock in shipping? What's the timeframe in terms of when they have to stop and feed and water them?
My third question is related to the horse documentary. We're told that some of those horses were shipped on double-decker livestock trucks, which would mean that the horses did not have headroom, which is required under the regulations, at least when they hit the Canadian border. I understand they can be shipped in the United States as feeder horses without headroom. Did the truckers change the designation of the horses when they hit the border? Give us the background on what the trucking regulations really are related to horse shipment, and were they met in that particular case?