Thank you very much, Chair. I'd like to make a few comments related to what Mr. Easter said.
I did smile somewhat when he spoke about us, the Conservatives, having orchestrated this meeting. This meeting wasn't called by the Conservatives; it was called by Mr. Easter himself, or by four members of the opposition, actually. So I think that needs to be brought to light. We have agreed to have this meeting. We have nothing to hide. We are in this meeting right now.
I'd like to address the point regarding the motion. There are actually a few things.
First, it's important to note that the food safety committee listened to over 50 hours of testimony from 77 witnesses and that this resulted in 878 pages of documentation. So a thorough review was done by the food safety subcommittee.
In addition to that, four lessons learned reports have been written. There was also, of course, the study done by the independent investigator, Sheila Weatherill, who interviewed and met first-hand with more than 100 people who had knowledge of the events of last summer, and she compiled 5.8 million pages of information.
In all of that, no one asked for a full public inquiry except one single person, only one witness. Out of everything I just listed—the lessons learned report, the report issued by the food safety subcommittee, and Sheila Weatherill's report—only one person even mentioned a full public inquiry, and it was a partisan, a Liberal supporter, who has given financially: Mr. Amir Attaran.
Mr. Bellavance is smiling now, because he knows. He takes exception to the fact that we've inserted that we don't feel that a public inquiry is necessary. He's saying, well, certainly the committee felt that at the time. They simply outvoted the Conservatives at that time. So I think it's a bit unfair to say, or to give the assertion or the view, perhaps, that the entire committee supported that recommendation, because clearly they didn't. That's why we ended up submitting our own report, to contrast the report submitted by the full committee.
I want to go on to mention why we feel a public inquiry is not necessary, and it's somewhat linked to Mr. Storseth's motion.
The motion that is in front of us today is not the full motion that he submitted to the clerk. So I would like to make an amendment to Mr. Storseth's motion—you can consider it a friendly amendment—simply to reinsert what he originally had in his motion.
The original part of the motion stands:
That the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food would like to commend Sheila Weatherill, the independent investigator into last summer's listeriosis outbreak, for her excellent work
My amendment is to add the next sentence:
Ms. Weatherill's in-depth examination has provided Canadians with a complete and comprehensive review of the events of last summer and recommendations that will improve Canada's food safety system. Due to this extensive review,
That would end my amendment, and then we'd go to the main motion:
the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food is of the view that no public inquiry is necessary.
It was the original motion. The clerk should have a copy of it.
The key point I want to make is that not only did Ms. Weatherill do a full and comprehensive review of this situation, of the food safety issues within Canada, but there were many other reviews and reports, lessons learned reports, done as well.
When you look at all of this, when you look at the big picture, definitely it has been reviewed to its full extent. As I mentioned, that's why no full public inquiry is necessary, because a thorough review on many different levels, involving many different levels of government, has already been done.
I will end there, Mr. Chair. Thank you. I have my amendment to the motion, on which, hopefully, we will eventually vote.
Thank you.