Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for coming.
Off the top, I knew things were bad; I just didn't think they were quite this bad. We've been going through the performance report for last year, and the numbers we're finding there are absolutely shocking as well. It's moneys not spent, and I don't know who you blame for it. Well, certainly Ritz is obviously responsible, but in fairness to him, as I think one of you mentioned, is it red tape or whatever? Bureaucracies take on a life of their own.
But on grants and contributions last year, there was $101 million lost. That's a lot of money. On the environment contributions, $15 million lapsed. On food safety, $13 million lapsed. And on business risk management, which the UPA talked about, the expenditures in that area this time around are $961,400,000 less than the year before. That's money that could have gone to the hog and beef industry with just a little restructuring, changing the viability test.
That's the sad reality of the world. And we can play politics with it if we like, but the sad reality of the world is that, as one of you said, it's results that should matter. There seems to be more interest in process. And actually, in all truth, guys—and I'm not blaming you necessarily for this—this town has a problem in that process is more important than results, and there's no industry affected more severely, I don't think, than agriculture.
So I have a couple of questions.
On the BRM problem that you mentioned, on business risk management, UPA, what could be done to maybe streamline that? We have expenditure levels we can get to. What can be done to get to that?
And on the last point that you made, Mr. Morris, on the regulatory package, what we're finding is that Canada, as always, seems to be the boy scout in the world. The Americans will shut us down. They'll use the regulation and shut us down just like that for anything. Other countries will do the same. But we don't do it the other way around.
Is this regulation important, from that perspective? What's the problem in terms of not getting this regulation done in time?
Those are my two questions.