I'll take this question. It is a very good question.
In the current Health of Animals Act, we have these provisions. If there is a disease outbreak on a farm, and CFIA inspectors find out that there is a disease happening, and it's a regulated disease under the Health of Animals Act, they will go and do the investigation. That investigation, under emergency management, would look at how much the disease has spread, what the cause was and where the disease came from. As we did recently with a tuberculosis outbreak and even influenza, we'll investigate. We will take samples. We'll do tests, and we'll go to farms where the animals have come from or the animals were bought, and trace backward and forward to find the cause.
We do everything to look at the cause, and if we know what the cause is, we zero in on it and eliminate that cause, and if there was an illegal activity, we may also have assistance from peace officers to help us.
In order to do this investigation, we have provisions under the Health of Animals Act and regulations to provide compensation to the producers for the destruction of these animals, because we'll have to destroy these animals to stop the spread of the disease.
The Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food also has provisions to help producers if we have put animals under quarantine or if they have to put down healthy animals for some reason. They can also come in and implement some of the provisions of their funding to the producers, so there are provisions in the Health of Animals Act already that enable us to investigate, find the cause and eliminate the cause of disease.
Thank you.