In relation to your first question, that is very much a policy issue and it is not appropriate for me to comment on it in the context that you raised it, except to note that the legislation being proposed does have a review provision, and that review provision includes reference to resource review. How the committee chooses to deal with that, of course, is in the hands of the committee.
I'm glad you asked the question on the documentation, because we do have the power to compel documentation. That's never been in question and never been the issue. The Meat Inspection Act has such a provision. What's different in clause 27 is that we've added phrases about timeliness. While we have the power to compel it, there isn't a clear authority on compelling it in a certain timeframe. If you look at the situation in this case, we asked for the documentation verbally on September 6, which is quite appropriate. You're working with plant management.
We were not getting the impression that we were getting much action. We formally wrote to them on September 7. We set a deadline for producing that documentation on September 8, so we did take very quick and progressive action to set a deadline.
However, we don't really have an enforcement mechanism. The minister mentioned the only available enforcement mechanism, which is to simply shut down the plant. That is a theoretical option, no question, but if I go back to the point the other member raised, we also have to be seen as exercising authorities in a reasonable manner. Based on the information we had at that time, as the minister outlined, there were no spikes in illnesses, and no product that we knew had tested positive was in the marketplace. It would have been very difficult, in a practical sense, to pass that test.
That's why I think these provisions are important. They were put in the legislation when it was tabled in the Senate, which was well before this particular incident. They weren't tailored to this incident; they were tailored by our experience in other situations that have been replicated here, so we've strengthened the front-line inspector's ability to get action in a timely way by specifically adding that to the legislation.
I don't think the idea of asking an inspector to determine a format is workable. We have over 700 facilities. You don't want 700 inspectors having different formats. To answer that, we would rely on the regulation that we would put in place under subclauses 51(1) and 51(3), whereby we would be able to, in regulation, set out the format of the documentation and the type of information, and it would apply across the board.