Thank you for being here today. You were here earlier when the minister talked about the hiring of 200 inspectors at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. As you know, there are contradictory versions on the subject. For example, we've already heard what the President of the Agriculture Union, Bob Kingston, has said on the matter. Moreover, I believe he sent a letter to all committee members, stating the following:
No additional food inspectors have been hired by CFIA since well before the outbreak. The Agency simply does not have the resources to fully address food safety as well as all of its other mandated responsibilities.
For the purposes of clarity, I point out that he's talking about the listeriosis outbreak. That is somewhat what my colleague Ms. Bonsant said and what I mentioned to the minister.
To make a clean breast of it, it would be good for the committee to know when these 200 inspectors were allegedly hired. Where are they working? What is their job description? The minister added an interesting point, when he said that some 100 inspectors would be hired each year, but we don't know over how many years. How many new inspectors will be hired and what will their duties be?
You may not be able to answer me today, but it would be good for the committee to have that information so that we can know once and for all where these inspectors are who have allegedly been hired by the department. The union tells us that there are no new inspectors.
Furthermore, as regards the file that the committee began to study last August, we heard your evidence and that of the union following Luc Pomerleau's dismissal from the Agency. Mr. Pomerleau disclosed to his union the government's plan to cut the operating budget of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency by 5%. The plan also talked about privatizing more and more inspection services, leaving it to the industry to conduct inspections, rather than allowing Agency employees to do them.
You came and testified that this was not how that worked. Recently, however, veterinarians from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency felt they had to file suit against the Agency in the Federal Court of Appeal because, under a number of pilot projects, the industry itself would be inspecting poultry slaughter houses. Thus it would not be Agency veterinarians conducting inspections.
In view of all that happened, I believe the government has not learned from its mistakes. Listeriosis caused deaths. I don't want to engage in petty politics over this matter, but this kind of incident must be used to ensure that people have trust in their inspection system.
This is not what is happening in actual fact, particularly in the example I just cited, in which veterinarians are being shoved aside in favour of industry employees, who will conduct the inspections themselves, without any government supervision. That is precisely what the public fears: that the industry will conduct its own inspections. I don't mean that these people will do their job poorly. However, we have an agency and we don't want to play with people's health and safety or food safety. We want to take no risks, even if we know that we can't prevent every accident.
I would like to hear what you have to say on the subject.