Thank you very much.
I can't provide you with any more accuracy as to the percentage of imports that are inspected on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis. It's a problem that challenges industrial countries all around the world, in terms of being able to inspect the volume of product that's coming across the border. It's one of the reasons that a number of countries have tried to throw their borders further out, in terms of requirements, and it's an area where I believe we're possibly entering into some very fruitful discussions with the U.S. about partnering in those kinds of activities.
So, yes, it's a concern to Canadian food businesses, which obviously want a level playing field. But we're also very realistic that inspection doesn't necessarily guarantee food safety. It's a question of whether or not the food businesses, themselves, are committed to having food safety. You can't inspect your way to food safety. We can't inspect every single product or we'd be going home to dinner tonight without anything on the table, I regret to say.
What's the holdup in the strategy? I think it's a challenge that's been there all the years that I've been working for the coalition, which is a little over a decade now. So that takes us through several governments, and I don't think any of them are particularly to blame. It's just not yet been the time. Our view is that now for certain is the time. Let's do it now. We have lots of clear models that we can work with and lots of experience elsewhere we can work with, and modernizing our legislation and regulatory requirements shouldn't take the near decade that some of the others have been struggling with, if we move on it now.
In terms of the budget, I also noticed that there are some clear indications that there's going to be some additional funding provided in the areas where activities have been beefed up over the last few years. So, clearly, the government's been engaged in a balancing act. They've indicated that those savings are to come out of other areas than in terms of inspection.
The coalition and others have been involved in recent months in discussions with officials at CFIA about their new inspection modernization initiative. Indeed, I sat down with some of the senior officials there last week to have some further discussions on it. I'm quite confident that they're moving very seriously to improve the systems that they have in place and are looking at some different approaches.
That's why we think we need a national strategy discussion, so we can have an open and frank discussion of those approaches, both from the government side and the industry side, to see where we could go.