I want to thank all the witnesses and our officials for being here.
My first questions are for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Back in February, my colleague Alistair MacGregor presented a petition with more than 36,000 signatures to the House, calling for a ban on exporting live horses for slaughter. There was a huge outpouring of support from Canadians across the country. It was in the top 20 for the highest number of signatures ever for any petition to the House of Commons.
The government responded on March 29. Presumably, officials from CFIA had some involvement in the drafting of that response.
The last paragraph states:
To conclude this answer, the Government would like to thank petitioners for this opportunity to reiterate that the Government takes the issue of animal welfare seriously. We remain engaged in working diligently to implement the mandate letter commitment to ban the live export of horses for slaughter.
I'm curious as to whether the department officials can share with the committee what the holdup is with implementing this section of the Prime Minister's mandate letter to the minister.