Thank you, Chair.
Let me just say that not only is Bill S-11 legislation that we support but also that we want to try to work with you, Minister, and obviously our colleagues across the way, to ensure this legislation can be as good as possible.
We certainly agree there are some very good things in Bill S-11. It addresses some of the issues identified by all people in the legislature, as well as by CFIA—both administratively and by its inspectors in the field—and the industry in general, so we believe this bill is pointed in the right direction.
We'd like to see whether there are some things that can enhance and help it. We'll put those forward in a constructive manner. That's going to be our attempt here.
I want to get back to the usable data. I think that's a critical piece and I'm glad you raised it. It should be in a usable form and not, as you described—and I think probably very accurately—a bunch of boxes with a bunch of paper in them; that's not necessarily usable.
HACCP is the centrepiece for the plant itself. When we look at that, HACCP is not something we control per se as policy-makers. It is an independent piece that comes in as a control point that the plant has to administer and has to actually live up to; it has to be authorized and has to be registered. All of those things it has to do underneath that HACCP program.
The questions for me are these. How does the request that we now have through Bill S-11 about usable data get integrated into the HACCP piece? Does that become a change to the folks who register HACCP as well, or does it just become an augmentation to it? I'm happy either way, to be truthful. In fact, if it goes into HACCP, perfect; if it is an augmented piece to the HACCP program, that's good too.
I'll put the next question and allow you to get to it, Minister.
We know the HACCP programs, for those who have them in their plants, are reviewed annually by a third party, and not necessarily CFIA, by the way, just for the folks who are watching. These are registration programs. ISO 9001 registration is outside that and is not a CFIA responsibility, and folks need to know that.
That being the case, will there be an obligation that not only would we see that their registration has been effectively kept up, year to year to year, but we would also get more than just seeing their registration certificate? Would we see they've done the things they need to do to continue to get that registration?
Would this bill help make sure that kind of information-sharing continues, because the HACCP program is indeed supposed to be, in the words of a Toyota production assistant, “an ongoing quest for excellence”? If that is the case, should then that reporting mechanism be a two-way dialogue back and forth between the plant and its front-line inspectors to understand how that's working out?