Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for coming. It's really good for us to get an early start on what I'm going to say are non-political and non-partisan discussions on how we can help the Canadian agriculture industry through your departments. As committee members, we are trying to get a sense of where can we add value to make your jobs easier and for us to have success across Canada.
Early in my campaign I was discussing with some of the people of Guelph the need to replace some of the economic fallout that we've seen from the oil industry with an industry that's stable, productive, profitable, and really pan-Canadian.
Mr. Meredith, your presentation on the Canadian agricultural industry, and Mr. Mayers, your value-added on that, are really appreciated. My question might sound political, but I'm trying to be practical about it.
There have been cuts. We had a parliamentary budget officer report that showed some cuts to CFIA, and that's an area I'm very concerned with. We have some major constituents in Guelph, some businesses that see the value of the agency not only as you presented it in your video in protecting our food security but also in helping us with our exports. Our exports have gone from a $50-billion surplus to a $13-billion trade deficit, and we want to do whatever we can to try to build ourselves back up to a positive situation.
We've done some pre-budget consultations. They were completed at midnight last night. How can we invest in your area to try to help with situations that might stop the movement of goods from Canada? I'm trying to understand this from the sense of whether it's the border services or whether it's CFIA. We've heard some stories about shipments of live animals being stuck at border crossings for days. I've heard some stories about the inspection of bull semen, for example, not being done on a timely basis. One recently released shipment was held up since August 18 because of some of the issues like stress on the inspectors and the roles that they're trying to play.
Can you give us a sense of what we can do to help, in terms of investment in CFIA? Is this an area I should be concerned with?