Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would also like to thank all the witnesses. As Ms. Nash said, we are tired. We have been working on this for a number of days.
I would like to correct the record again. That's kind of my job here.
A couple of things that have been said by Mr. Kingston don't really portray the complete picture.
For example, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has recently posted their annual update of staff numbers on their website. It shows clearly that there has been an increase of 32 people over the last year. Since 2006, when we took office, there's been an increase of 700 people.
Just as quite often another party in this place says 750,000 net new jobs somehow is a cut in jobs in this country, the math does not add up. I do have to correct Mr. Kingston because I think it's unfair when the whole picture is not portrayed.
Federal CFIA inspectors were doing provincial inspections, and now they are being transferred to be provincial employees. That is not a cut, which is what Mr. Kingston is suggesting in his numbers. That is a transfer of responsibility. There has been no change other than the transfer of responsibility. The federal CFIA inspectors are going to be provincial employees doing exactly the same job. That is not a cut. That is a transfer.
Aside from that, there has also got to be consideration for the fact that the export food safety certificates, which Mr. Kingston failed to explain, are as a result of a deal between Canada and the United States. We have accredited inspectors who do exactly the same work, who do exactly the same monitoring, who are accredited the same way. They both issue those certificates. One hundred per cent of the imports on either side are inspected exactly the same way by qualified personnel. Unfortunately, it's very misleading what Mr. Kingston has said.
Having said all of that, I thought it was very, very important when he said that money is important. I want to remind Canadians when it comes to the CFIA that $100 million was provided in the last budget for food safety, which unfortunately the opposition parties voted against. This year there's an increase of $51 million for food safety. We already have an indication that the opposition parties are going to be voting against that.
I did want to very clearly correct the record because it is not fair when only half the picture is portrayed.
I do want to talk about high-risk inspections as well, which is very important. When we're talking about meat, this government has done a lot of work to make sure that this is looked at. When it comes to inspections, they are risk based. That is how they are done.
A higher risk area, like meat, absolutely is going to have some clear and consistent and regular checking. In every slaughterhouse every single day there are inspectors. Not only that, inspectors were doing a check every day and then a veterinarian was double-checking, duplicating to sign it off. This government believes we ought to reduce some duplication, but we are going to ensure that those high-risk areas are continually monitored.
Then we have the low-risk areas, for example, when we're talking about dried, processed or canned foods, that kind of thing. They probably don't require the same extent of inspection as the meat.