Subcommittee on Food Safety Committee on April 20th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

We'll reconvene the meeting. As discussed earlier, we're going to get started with this portion of the meeting 15 minutes earlier, and therefore we'll be finishing at 8:15 p.m.

I'd like to very much thank all of our witnesses from the CFIA for coming here today. It's a very important study.

I'll turn it over, first of all, I understand, to Ms. Swan, for 10 minutes.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I have a point of clarification before we start, Mr. Chair. We have the CFIA before us now. We're going to hear from a lot of witnesses over the course of the next several meetings. We do reserve the right to recall the CFIA before us again if necessary, based on information from other witnesses. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I think anybody has that option, Mr. Easter.

Go ahead, Ms. Swan.

[Carole Swan, President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee. My name is Carole Swan and I'm the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We look forward to assisting the committee with its important work.

Let me start by saying how saddened and disheartened all of us at the CFIA are by the food-related illnesses experienced last year. We want to express our sincere sorrow to those families who lost loved ones or were otherwise affected.

Secondly, I want to state that our agency staff, be they inspectors, lab technicians, recall investigators, scientists or any other classification, are highly skilled and committed professionals dedicated to the protection of Canadians. This is an organization that cares about food safety.

Third, we're not perfect. The “Lessons Learned” documents that we released on Friday were direct and honest. We did not use that process to point fingers at others. We are focused on improvement.

In my remarks today I'd like to cover three areas: first, what the agency does; second, the challenges regulators face in a global food market; and third, what we are doing to continuously improve food safety. I will then ask Dr. Brian Evans to outline what the CFIA has done specifically in relation to the listeriosis outbreak.

The CFIA is a science-based regulator with a mandate to safeguard food, animal health, and plant protection. Our plant and animal mandates also relate to food safety, as foods are derived from these resources.

In support of this mandate, the CFIA works to identify and prevent risks to our food safety, whether the foods come from Canada or abroad; to identify and control animal diseases that pose a risk to human health such as BSE, or mad cow disease as it is commonly referred to, and avian influenza; and to protect the country's animal and plant resources, both in the field and in the forest, from devastating foreign pests and diseases that could negatively affect the food supply.

The CFIA has inspectors, veterinarians, scientists and other specialists in nearly 500 locations across Canada. It operates at border crossings, processing plants, slaughterhouses and in labs and research facilities throughout the country.

The CFIA is part of a national network responsible for food safety, which includes Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, provincial and territorial departments of health, and the public health units found in local municipalities.

Health Canada sets food safety policy and standards. The CFIA puts these policy and standards into effect through regulation, inspection, and enforcement. The Public Health Agency of Canada focuses on disease detection, reporting, and prevention. It is the primary federal contact with provincial public health authorities. Our work intersects with the Public Health Agency of Canada if there is an illness caused by food-borne diseases, as the Public Health Agency of Canada monitors and reports on such illnesses.

In terms of the CFIA's role in food safety, we inspect, test, audit, and review food production to verify that industry lives up to its legal requirement to produce safe food. When it doesn't, we take enforcement action to bring it into compliance. We conduct investigations when we think food safety has been compromised or when we are alerted to a problem, and we issue food recalls where necessary.

All partners in food safety have a responsibility to be constructive in their efforts to improve the protection of human health using science, international best practices, and new techniques. We look forward to hearing from other witnesses as well as to this committee's report and that of the independent investigator.

Like food regulators around the world, the CFIA is facing new challenges. The trading and processing of food has become more complex than ever due to globalization and the sourcing from all over the world of food ingredients that go into processed finished food products. This economic trend is also spurred by changing demographics and consumer preferences for fresh, convenient, exotic, and imported foods.

Since the agency was established in 1997, the nature of the challenges we face has evolved, as has the frequency of events having significant health or food safety implications. For example, in the past two years we have dealt with several significant challenges, including melamine contamination in Chinese dairy products, E. coli in Canadian and American beef, salmonella in U.S. peppers, and, currently, salmonella in U.S. peanuts and pistachios. I cite these to illustrate that the CFIA, like food inspection agencies around the world, is facing increasing pressures and challenges.

The listeriosis outbreak from contaminated Maple Leaf food product last year was the largest food recall in Canada. The events of last summer exposed vulnerabilities in collective surveillance and in the national protective network. In the agency's “Lessons Learned” review, our goal was to provide an assessment that was comprehensive, honest, and sincere. We do recognize that our work to improve is never done, that continuous improvement is key to food safety. Through the review process we determined where immediate improvements could be made and we made them. There is more to be done, and we welcome the guidance of this committee and of the independent investigator to advance this effort yet further.

Given the increased complexity of challenges in food safety, a number of steps have been taken to make improvements. Let me provide some examples. In December 2007 the government announced the food and consumer safety action plan to strengthen Canada's food and product safety system. Over the past year the agency has hired additional inspectors to provide front-line protection against food safety risks. Last year we established an academic advisory panel of independent experts to review food safety and public health protection. We have established an external audit committee to provide oversight to the operations of the agency, and for listeria control we put in place strong additional requirements for industry that will give us a better early warning system. We've stepped up our own verification testing to monitor industry compliance with those requirements. Dr. Evans will provide detail on this.

Let me conclude these brief remarks by assuring you that the CFIA is committed to food safety. Food safety is our number one priority. As an institution and as individuals, we are committed to doing the best job we can.

Following the events of last summer, we took a hard look at ourselves and immediately began to make changes. We did not wait to act. The events of last summer continue to guide our efforts to provide strengthened protection and detection. While it is important to understand the past, the job is left undone if we don't translate that understanding into action.

We appreciate the committee's guidance, as well as that of Sheila Weatherill, the independent investigator, in considering further improvements for all the partners in food safety.

Thank you. I will turn it over to Dr. Evans.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Dr. Evans.

[Dr. Brian Evans, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Food Inspection Agency]

Thank you, Carole.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In full respect of the committee and their desire to question, I'll be as brief as possible.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this committee, and I welcome your contributions to our sincere efforts to achieve the highest possible standards of health protection for Canadians.

As indicated, my name is Dr. Brian Evans. I am the executive vice-president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and I serve as the Chief Veterinary Officer for Canada.

I'd also like to start by extending our profound sympathy to the families affected. It is clear that, collectively, we did not meet the expectations of Canadians.

I'll begin by giving you a brief timeline of the events of last summer related to the recall. I'll then talk a little bit about our meat inspection framework. Finally, I'd like to share with you what the CFIA and its government partners have done to strengthen our food safety system with regard to both the prevention and response to listeria to contribute to higher levels of protection.

With respect to the outbreak timeline....

The listeriosis outbreak began in early June and was detected by public health officials in Ontario over the ensuing seven weeks. Detailed investigative work at municipal and provincial levels led to their advising the CFIA on August 6, 2008, that a possible food link was suspected. As there has been some confusion around it, let me underline that date. It was on August 6 that the CFIA was first informed of a public health investigation into two listeriosis cases in a nursing home. Samples taken 16 days previously from meat used to make sandwiches in early July at the facility had tested positive.

Upon notification, a similar level of investigation was immediately undertaken to confirm the source of the contamination through multiple lines of inquiry. We needed to provide Canadians with credible information upon which to base their actions and decisions.

The investigation entailed determining the source of the meat products through purchasing and supply records, identification of the specific product, and the relevant lot and production codes that were used in the making of sandwiches from which the test samples had been taken. Once determined, a further search was undertaken, in cooperation with public health partners, based on distribution records to other locations in order to find an unopened package of the same type and code. This is critical in such investigations to ascertain whether the contamination of the product occurred during handling and preparation at the nursing home or whether the product had been contaminated at production.

A sample was located on August 12 and submitted to the CFIA food laboratory in Scarborough. Also on August 12, the CFIA was advised by another district health unit of two additional listeriosis illnesses in a hospital in Halton region and of positive test results on two samples of meat served at the hospital. However, the patients did not have a history of having consumed the product.

Based on these new developments, the CFIA office of food safety recall initiated a teleconference on August 13 to bring all the jurisdictions--municipal, provincial, and federal--together to review all the laboratory and epidemiological information. A detailed sampling plan to cover all products produced on the same production lines was shared with all the parties to assist in locating and collecting samples over the next two days for testing at the CFIA Scarborough laboratory. These calls continued for the next two days to facilitate information sharing and analysis, and to collectively determine if the evidence supported the conducting of an advisory or recall.

On the evening of Saturday, August 16, the CFIA laboratory confirmed that the sample collected on August 12 was positive for listeria monocytogenes. Although the molecular typing would not be available for another seven days to confirm that the isolate from the meat product matched those of the illnesses, a public health advisory was issued in the early morning hours of August 17.

l'd like to take a moment to talk about one area of our inspection activities that was frequently cited as germane to the listeria issues of last summer.

One of the techniques that governments around the world have adopted for effectively identifying and preventing food safety risks is called hazard analysis critical control points, or HACCP.

Its use has been mandatory in federally regulated food establishments in Canada since 2005. It is a standardized, internationally recognized system used by most of the developed world. An emphasis on prevention is absolutely critical in limiting the potential contamination of meat products with pathogens such as Listeria, given their presence in the environment. Traditional physical inspection approaches are not effective, as their presence cannot be detected by sensory means such as seeing, tasting, touching and smelling.

HACCP identifies the various stages in food production where food safety hazards are known to occur. A food safety check is inserted at these stages to detect and prevent problems early on. If a problem is found, corrective measures are immediately taken. This process puts the focus on the prevention of food safety risks rather than "after-the-fact" detection on end products.

This is not privatization. It serves to increase industry's accountability and efforts for the safety of the foods they produce. There has not, is not, and will not be any diminished role for investment by the government through the mandatory use of HACCP. The setting of standards, the verification of compliance, and the application of enforcement actions by government remain unchanged.

At the CFIA we use an inspection framework and tool set called the compliance verification system, or CVS. Essentially a detailed checklist that guides inspectors, it assures consistency and uniformity in our inspection activities and prescribes inspection frequencies. Again, the CVS does not change the government's role in establishing food safety standards, in verifying compliance with food safety requirements, or in our enforcement activities.

I would now like to provide some detail on what the CFIA has done in the aftermath of the events of last summer to strengthen food safety in the context of listeria as part of our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement. Our reviews of the events of last summer pointed to the need to enhance protocols and activities to strengthen protection against this potentially lethal pathogen. In parallel, we need to continue the same important work against other microbial threats to the food supply. This should not be a one-horse trick.

Specifically, we identified a previously unknown risk for the harbouring of organic material deep within slicers, in spite of their routine cleaning and sanitizing. We now direct industry to clean slicing equipment more thoroughly and aggressively. We have enhanced CFIA direct oversight and verification of equipment sanitation and equipment maintenance. Environmental testing for listeria in ready-to-eat meat establishments is now a mandatory component of an approved HACCP plan. Results of all environmental tests, as was previously prescribed for end product tests, are reviewed daily. We conduct trend analysis of positive test results for listeria in the plant environment. This is important, because looking at aggregate environmental tests over a period of time will provide us with early warning of potential problems so that corrective actions can be taken before a positive test is found in food. Environmental testing as part of the CFIA inspection tasks has been reintroduced, and along with government end product testing, this is occurring at a higher level of frequency. Investments have also been made at the laboratory with ongoing validation of new test methods and increased capacity to conduct genetic fingerprinting of isolates.

The CFIA worked with Health Canada to update directives regarding the control of Listeria in federally registered ready-to-eat meat processing plants. The improved directives focus on early detection and control of Listeria in the environment, to prevent the transfer of bacteria to contact surfaces and food. The CFIA proposed, discussed and challenged the revised directives and implementation strategies with food safety scientists, industry experts, inspection staff and relevant unions.

Full implementation of the new government product and environmental testing programs was completed on April 1, 2009. Furthermore, the CFIA will promote equivalency in these measures from our trading partners, with additional verifications of products imported into Canada.

Taken together, these actions will help reduce the chances of a similar outbreak occurring and will allow us to do a better job in the future of monitoring the shifts and trends in microbial pathogen presence in the operating environment of federal meat processing establishments.

In conclusion, listeria, as with other bacteria, is commonly present in food production environments. It can and must be controlled, but it cannot be entirely eliminated. The effort to control listeria is ongoing and requires a collective commitment. We welcome the work of this committee and its contribution to guiding additional investments to protecting Canadians.

Thank you for your time. We'd be pleased to respond.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thanks very much, Mr. Evans and Ms. Swan.

We'll move on to seven-minute rounds.

Ms. Duncan.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of you for coming. We appreciate your comments.

I'm struggling with the lack of coordination regarding the investigation. CFIA, Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency have all been involved in pandemic planning, for example. The basics are the same: Who takes the lead? What is the reporting structure? What is the cycle of communication? I feel we've made the same mistakes regarding listeriosis as some that were made regarding SARS.

We've just had Maple Leaf here, and they discussed shared responsibility from both the company and the government authority. When we talked about SARS, it was shared understanding, shared responsibility, and shared lessons learned. I appreciate you've been very detailed in how you will go forward. You mentioned you took a hard look at yourselves and you took immediate action. I don't hear the word “responsibility”.

My question is going to be around who was to take leadership. Where was government oversight for this? I'll give some examples. You will have to bear with us because the dates are different in different reports.

CFIA informed the public health division and PHAC on August 13 that Maple Leaf was the manufacturer. Why was it two days later when the Halton Region Health Department issued an advisory to local homes about a possible link? Why didn't CFIA post a warning on its website? On the 13th, why was there no discussion among partners or communication to the public? Why didn't CFIA post a warning on its website until four days later, on the 17th? What other methods did it take to inform the public? Why did CFIA wait until the 19th to issue a health hazard alert, advising the public not to eat 23 ready-to-eat deli meats packaged at Maple Leaf?

I know this is not CFIA, but it's again government oversight. Why did the Chief Medical Officer of Health wait until the 20th to issue a public news release? Why did the Chief Medical Officer of Health wait until the 21st to notify the LHINs to ensure products on the CFIA list were thrown out? The Chief Medical Officer of Health ordered the preparation of clinical practice guidelines for front-line physicians at a still later date. These are real concerns. This is government oversight.

I'm going to add one more to that. This is a comment in the Ontario report. Because the local and provincial public health units were not directly involved in inspecting the plant, it was difficult for them to obtain information about its production processes and the extent to which contaminated products had been distributed across the province. Why was it difficult? Who made it difficult? How could these challenges have been circumvented?

My questions are really around government oversight.

[Carole Swan]

Thank you. Let me start, and I will ask Ryan to provide some additional detail.

You are quite right, food safety is an important, shared responsibility among a number of federal partners, provincial partners, municipal partners, and industry, as we've heard as well. The challenge is to make sure that people pursue their responsibilities and carry out their tasks with as much coordination as possible. I think we have learned a number of lessons from this particular experience, many of which we're putting in place now in terms of different protocols and different relationships.

I would point out that the CFIA focuses on the food part of this. This is not surprising.

You have raised a number of questions that I think the Public Health Agency of Canada will be able to address when they appear before this committee, related to the whole epidemiological work that was going on.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

It's still government oversight.

[Carole Swan]

It is government oversight, absolutely. One of the things we found during this particular outbreak was that it was important for CFIA to bring people together. We did, in fact, starting on August 13, as I think you will have seen in our chronology, bring together all the partners to make sure there was a common base of understanding and that the facts were shared appropriately among all partners in the food safety chain.

I'm going to ask Brian to touch upon the timeline a little bit because I think it's important to understand that this is a complex timeline with a number of people becoming involved at different points in time.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Before you go to Brian, does CFIA accept shared responsibility? As you point out, your interest is the food part.

[Carole Swan]

I think all partners in food safety would accept responsibility: the CFIA, other federal agencies, provincial ministries of health, and industry, as we've heard today. We all have a role to play in making sure food is safe for Canadians.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

[Dr. Brian Evans]

Thank you for the question, honourable member.

Again, I take your points as very valid. I think if you look across the lessons learned, the issue of coordination, early engagement, and information sharing is a common theme that's been picked up by all jurisdictions. We're all passionate about getting it right. We're all passionate about bringing the best expertise we collectively have to a common purpose.

We do have protocols in place. We have a food-borne illness outbreak response protocol called the FIORP, which guides the activities of the federal government and the provincial government in the early stages of the epidemiological investigation and then transfers the lead from the province to the national lead on the epidemiological side when the outbreak extends beyond provincial borders.

At CFIA three years ago, we entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to help guide these types of activities. It is fair to state that while we have the documents in place, they were not operationalized to the level that would have made them as effective as they could have been—and that is a work that needs to be further extended. It's one thing to have protocols in place, but if everybody doesn't act in accordance with them, or they're not aware of their roles, they are not effective protocols.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

These are different illnesses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

I'm sorry, Ms. Duncan, your time is up, if you're going to interject.

I'll let you finish, Mr. Evans, what you were talking about.

[Dr. Brian Evans]

I apologize to the member. We'll hopefully reconnect on another round.

Again, as Carole has indicated, what is really important about this is to put in true context for everybody not just the roles that people were playing but the information we were dealing with individually and collectively. The death of 22 individuals and the illnesses of some 57 individuals, as we've all identified, are not acceptable. It's tragic. Any preventable death is unacceptable, and our policy in CFIA is that any food-borne illness is not acceptable, even though that's probably a standard that nobody could ever meet.

At the time this was unfolding, it was unfolding in real time, as has been indicated by Dr. Williams in his message on Friday. It takes time for people to consume a product, to develop clinical illness, to take the decision to seek medical attention, and then, on the part of the medical community, if they receive patients, will they pursue symptomatic treatment or will they test? If they opt to test, it takes time for those results to come back and for them to be analyzed and collated. It is a time process.

What we were aware of, as CFIA, is this. On August 6 we were approached by one public health unit to advise us of two patients ill in one facility. That was the basis on which multiple lines of investigation started. As most food safety experts would say, the largest percentage of food-borne illness occurs in preparation and handling, not normally at production. So the early assessment of that circumstance, again, even with a common food source, would say not all members in the nursing home who had consumed food of the same type were ill. So again, there was no immediate predisposition to suggest that this was something much bigger that would lead to the end result, as Public Health hopefully will share.

The first confirmed death associated with this outbreak, in fact, was confirmed on August 23, a full week after the recall had been initiated. What triggered activities in bringing the jurisdictions together, as we've indicated, was that on August 12 a second public health unit contacted CFIA from a different region to indicate they had a hospital circumstance with two patients who were also ill. Again, this did not represent, in a traditional sense, a massive outbreak across the entire population nor even within those institutions. What was critical in coming to the determination on the advisory and alerting the public was being able to give credible information to the public that allowed them to take decisions to protect themselves and their families, either through their behaviours and/or their purchasing circumstances.

To that extent, from our perspective, the decision to issue an advisory.... All jurisdictions involved had the authority at the point that they felt that trigger had been met. That was part of the day-by-day discussions, and there was not agreement around the table that we had reached this point, primarily because, in truth, that threshold also takes into account very recent experiences that we've all gone through. There was reference earlier to the salmonella Saintpaul outbreak in the United States last year, which extended for some seven months on the basis that it was a tomato-based circumstance. It ultimately turned out not to be tomatoes but peppers.

We're also informed by the circumstance several years ago when there was an epidemiological determination that strawberries from California were in fact infected with cyclospora. That changed--on the advisory--the purchasing behaviour of people. They chose to buy other products. At the end of the day, one of the products they were buying was raspberries. It was determined that the true source of the outbreak was raspberries from Guatemala.

So we do recognize the importance and the primacy of sharing information with the public at the point that we can give them information that we feel will protect their interests and allow them to take an appropriate decision, but to give them information that we can't validate and perhaps put them at greater risk or cause them to change their behaviours.... Again, this was not a decision taken in isolation but one that involved the best experts for multiple jurisdictions to reach that level of conclusion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Larry Miller]

Thank you.

Before we go to Mr. Bellavance, as you will probably have noticed in the first two hours tonight, and in this one here, since this is a very important issue that we are studying, I'm being much more lenient with the time, and that's with everybody. I'm not going to accept any questions from any member after the seven or five minutes. I know some of it is very complicated testimony, but I must ask that we keep the answers as brief as possible. I'm going to be lenient, as I said, as I see fit, and you'll have to bear with me on that.

Mr. Bellavance, seven minutes, please.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to thank our witnesses for their testimony.

I would like to clarify the issue of shared responsibility with you, Ms. Swan. In answering a question asked by Ms. Duncan, you said that the agency accepted that it had a role to play as regards food safety and public health. However, we are specifically interested in the events that occurred last year at the Maple Leaf plant in Toronto and that are the reason for this meeting of the subcommittee today. The fact is that Listeria was discovered in foods that were sold, and as a result, 21 people died. On this specific point, does the agency accept at least a share of the responsibility?

Mr. McCain told us earlier that he accepted full responsibility for what happened. That may be entirely to his credit, but the general public and we, their representatives, will think that the agency and other agencies and the government also have a responsibility regarding what happened. Does the agency accept some of this responsibility?

[Carole Swan]

Let me say that responsibility is shared across a number of fronts. It is government's basic responsibility to set standards for safe food, to hold industry accountable, to monitor, and to consequence industry when it fails to produce safe food. It is quite clearly industry's fundamental responsibility to produce safe food.

In terms of the recall, as I've mentioned, the ability to identify food-borne illness, the ability to warn the public, and the ability to make connections with a food substance are shared across a number of players federally, provincially, and municipally. I think it is fair to say that everyone involved in that continuum has a role to play.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

You do not accept a direct share of the responsibility for what happened last August at the Maple Leaf plant. In 1999 or 2000, the Auditor General stated in a report that one of the agency's problems was that it had a great deal of difficulty accepting its responsibility, at least publicly, because it was afraid of lawsuits. Is that what is preventing you from admitting today that you too have some responsibility for what happened?

[Carole Swan]

I have said, Mr. Bellavance, that there is a great deal of shared responsibility. CFIA is one player in a continuum of players who are responsible for making sure the food Canadians eat is safe. I can direct you to our “Lessons Learned” documents, which we worked at long and hard to make sure we could identify in the agency what had happened and what we could have done better. I find them to be quite stark documents. If you've read them, you'll know they're not public relations pieces. They are quite detailed, technical attempts to understand what happened, what didn't happen, and what we could do better.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Perhaps you will not be able to answer my question immediately, but I would ask you to forward this information to us, where appropriate.

How many CFIA inspectors were at the Maple Leaf plant when this situation occurred? Let us take the months of July and August, for example. What exactly was their job there? Were these people working on the floor, inspecting the food? Were these inspectors there throughout all the operations? I think it is important to know these things. From the information we have obtained, the inspector at the contaminated Maple Leaf plant in Toronto was responsible for seven plants at the time of the listeriosis outbreak.

We are entitled to ask the following question: did the inspectors have enough time to ensure the plants for which they were responsible met the food safety requirements? Various pieces of information have been gleaned here and there since these events occurred. You can help us get some very specific answers. Is it true that this inspector was responsible for seven plants? Do you think that is appropriate? Is this how things should be, or do you think there is room for improvement?

Our objective is to ensure that tragedies of this type are as infrequent as possible. I know you cannot prevent everything. Mr. Evans said that, and we also realize that Listeria cannot be eradicated. It would be nice if we could, but that is not possible. Listeria is always present.

This subcommittee can definitely try to find some improvements. Would one improvement not be to ensure, first of all, that there are enough inspectors, and second, that they do not have more bureaucratic duties than actual work on the floor?

[Carole Swan]

Thank you, Monsieur Bellavance.

I'm going to ask vice-president of operations, Cam Prince, who has a direct relationship with our inspection workforce, to answer your question specifically about the inspectors in the plant and the work they did.