Thank you again to all of you for being here.
Any kind of legislation, any law that we have, is only as good as the ability to enforce it—I think everybody would agree with that—so I want to talk a little more about inspection, because there has been some confusing information out there.
We were told that 700 new food inspectors have been added to the ranks. From the research we've done, we know that a lot of them include hundreds whose work has nothing to do with protecting Canadians from unsafe food products. For example, 200 inspectors have been added to the invasive alien species program, which obviously is important but doesn't deal directly with food safety.
It's my understanding that since 2006, not a single new meat hygiene slaughter inspector position has been added to the CFIA ranks, except to fill vacancies. I'd like to get some clarification on that. We know that as a result of what happened at Maple Leaf Foods,170 inspectors have been added to the processed meat program. Now we've had this outbreak at XL. Following what happened with Maple Leaf Foods, are more inspectors going to be added, and if so, how many, and when will they be in place?