In fact, the meat hygiene pilot had as one of its objectives to better understand the difference between provincial and federal requirements. While they aren't absolute assessments in terms of the numbers, it was clear that particularly for small and medium enterprises, the cost of meeting the federal requirements under a highly prescriptive model, which would involve not just adjustments to how they do their business, but in some cases adjustments to their physical plant for delivery.... We had requirements under the meat inspection regulations that were prescriptive to the point of very detailed requirements on what your walls were made of, the type of lighting you had, even as far as—it's the example we often use—the distance that the drain had to be from the door. Clearly, if your establishment, producing meat within a provincially registered context, didn't have the drain at the right distance from the door, that was a major infrastructure change.
So the costs vary quite dramatically. That's why we can't put an absolute number, but it was clear that this was a barrier. By shifting to a more outcome-based requirement, for example, instead of requiring where the drain is, requiring that there be no standing water, it would enable more facilities to make the adjustment to federal registration if they chose, without having to make significant infrastructure investment.