Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all of you for coming today.
This is for Robert and Sukhdeep.
In your opening remarks you said that imported food is regulated to a lesser extent. This confirms testimony that was given before this committee a year or so ago. That testimony suggested that only 2% of the food coming into the country is actually inspected, meat to a much greater extent, which you also said. As a result, a lot of Canadians have concerns about imported food when they hear about melamine in milk from China. I'm not trying to discredit; I'm just trying to clear up some of this, okay?
Bill S-11 will include provisions to register and license importers, and it will require them to maintain a written preventative food safety control plan, so it sounds like the government is downloading responsibility for food inspection to the importing industry. If there's still a lack of inspection of this food that is coming into our country, can you tell me how being licensed and adopting a preventative food safety control plan will indeed assure Canadians that their imported food will be any safer than it is now?