Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think the public was quite shocked by the revelations that were brought forward by an employee of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. I think many people who have seen the story unfold, instead of wanting to give him a pink slip, actually want to give him an award for bringing this information to the public.
Again, it seems the government is not wanting to share this information with the public, otherwise it would concede it. I guess the question is, what is the government hiding? We need to probe into this. This is an issue that has seized all Canadians.
Mr. Easter talked about what the implications would be on the food industry, and then he picked up on the most recent case of BSE. BSE was something that had been on the radar of scientists who were working for the government, and there's still an outstanding case being fought by Dr. Shiv Chopra, who told the government a year before the first case, a year before the first case of BSE arrived, that this was going to happen--a year before. What happened? He was fired.
So don't tell the public to trust you, because they don't.
We need to shed some light on this. BSE is not gone, and we need more stringent regulation, not less. There are better methods of dealing with it—European Union, Japanese, to name a couple—and if this government is going down the path of deregulation and handing it over to industry, the public needs to know that.
I might add, Mr. Chair, that this also touches on the problem of what this government considers sensitive documents and how they arrange that. That's probably for another committee, but I think it's clear that they have problems with what they consider is...I think everything is confidential according to this government. I suppose the milk calendar that comes out every year would be seen as confidential by this government if they thought it was going to undermine their political interests.
I think we need to have some light shed on it. I think this proposal, from what we can glean, is heading in the wrong direction. We've seen what has happened in other jurisdictions, when you hand over what is a core service of government to industry. It's not a pretty sight, and Canadians will not have it. Producers will pay the price.
I want to share some facts—and I think it's important in terms of this motion—that many Canadians will be interested in, which is the skyrocketing cost of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency over the last number of years in hiring temporary help agencies. In front of me--this is from government, a government document, and I'll table it later-- a document that shows that as of 2005-06, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was spending over $1 million on hiring temporary help agencies to do its work.
Mr. Chair, do you know what that clocks in this year? And we're not even finished. This is only for half a year. Almost $4 million. I cite this evidence, Mr. Chair, because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency seems to want to get out of the business of using public servants, who are experts, who are trained and work for the public interest.
This is order paper information that I have. The government has gone in the last five years.... The data I have here starts with 2002-03, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency spending $280,000 per annum on temporary help agencies--in other words, external from government and bringing them in--clocking in at $3.575 million, and we haven't even finished the year.
I cite that as evidence, Mr. Chair, simply to underline the point that has been made, that many people have serious and grave concerns, myself included, about the direction in which the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is going. This government seems to want to go down the path of getting out of the business of.... The least we can have from this government is some transparency by tabling the documents that people have been concerned about and, for their benefit, clear the air.
The worst thing we can have in our food industry is speculation and concerns about what goes on people's table. The last thing we need is for our government to walk silently out of this room without providing evidence that Canadians demand—and mind you, this is a government that said it was going to be different and be accountable and transparent.
I guess that's what the motion is about, so we will be supporting it. Hopefully the government will see the wisdom of that and will do the same.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.