What Lucky is talking about is the current meat inspection regime, and we definitely have a very strong protocol in place to deal with that.
What this bill tries to address is how we should deal with imports other than meat and poultry. I don't think it would be appropriate, and science would tell us that, to take the same approach as we do with meat and poultry.
Do we need more resources to do that properly? It's not unlike a question that was asked before we sat down here: do we have enough inspectors in meat plants and so on? Well, this whole question of whether we have enough inspectors hinges a heck of a lot on what we would like to do with our food industry and where we would like to go. Hence, a national food strategy is going to help us answer that question.
The other thing that will help us answer that question is the amendment that was made in the Senate, relating to a study that needs to be done every five years to see if the resources are actually in place.
When the CFIA was created over 10 years ago, we in the food industry supported its creation. We think the idea of an agency focusing on food safety is the right way to go. Canada has been a leader in this aspect and is an example. What we did at that time was to bring all the legislation together under the agency. One of the things that was promised at the time, which we would do, is go over that legislation and get rid of the quality stuff and all the other prescriptive things and focus on food safety.
That's what this bill is starting to do. It's really redoing that and focusing on food safety. If we do that successfully, then the question obviously is: if we had 5,000 inspectors under the old approach, how many inspectors would we need under the new approach and a new act? That's a question we need to answer. We need to do the work to study that.
I am not in a position to tell you whether it's less or more. If we have a good handle on what this new bill wants to do and what the regulations are, we should be able to study and determine, on a good science-based approach, what the number of inspectors required is. It could be less or more.