In my layperson's read on this, I would answer yes. I am not a scientist. I understand that people who work in industry are not necessarily scientists and they are not there to monitor the safety of the food but to make a profit. I do not want to diminish the role of industry, but I think the mandate of the CFIA cannot be diluted and we cannot move towards this type of deregulation without some kind of impact on the safety.
What all this means is that the scientists, the veterinarians, the biologists, the chemists, the people who work at CFIA, will have more the role of auditors versus the role of actual inspectors, and they will do spot-check controls versus more in-depth monitoring. That will apply to the labels and to the inspection processes and all that.
As I said, I'm not a scientist, but what I read and what I heard from the members that I represent, over and over again, is that the direction the CFIA is taking will allow them to continue to do crisis management—that is, there will have to be an outbreak of some kind somewhere for them to intervene, and that's where they will focus their energies. On the rest, they're going to hope that everything is okay and that everything stays still, because that's where they're intending to go.
Is this a purely financial, fiscal initiative? Is it motivated by the fact that they have to have economies of scale in their processes and their operations? I don't know. If it is the case, it's a sorry state of affairs.