My response to that, honourable member, is at two levels.
In previous discussions I've had with Dr. Randy Huffman, who I believe was accompanying Mr. Michael McCain earlier today, and drawing on his broad experience again...these--for lack of a better term--slicers, because that's how they're referred to, are monstrous machines. These are computerized. These things are bigger than my car. To insinuate that we, at CFIA, would have the ability or engineering skills to dismantle or go further than the manufacturer's ability.... First and foremost, I don't think most companies would let us do that, because they might not get them back together again by the time we were done with them. These machines require a strong degree of sophistication in order to be disassembled to the point where you would find something that was contributing to this circumstance.
With respect to the audit, I can honestly say that there was a time, going back to 1999, when in fact we did annual verification audits that were quite extensive. What we determined from that, of course, was that in 1999 we would be better off to do audits quarterly than annually, because, again, doing so would give us a much more intense look, on a more frequent basis, than we would have if we waited for a year for these things to happen.
So, in fact, there was an adjustment in 1999 to go from an annual audit to quarterly FSEP and verification audits, to increase that frequency, and to find things in a faster way. So that program, in effect, ran up until the start of this year, with the quarterly audits being undertaken. And then through the piloting of CVS, the major components of that audit system were then incorporated into daily, weekly, and monthly activities through the CVS program.
To infer that in fact we, at CFIA, were somehow dismantling slicers on our own in past years I don't think is accurate, sir.