Okay, and we'll go until we've exhausted questions, I gather.
Mr. McCain, thank you for coming. I might say, in beginning, that I think your performance in this whole exercise, in this crisis, really shows such forthright transparency in terms of your operational concern, if I can say that, and I think honesty certainly goes to your credibility as a person and to your credibility as a company. I want to say that on the record because I'm pretty sure your lawyers were probably advising you otherwise. I think you've done the right thing for Canadians with the direct approach you've taken, and I want to congratulate you on that.
In your remarks today you've certainly accepted a lot of responsibility yourself. I understand that and I congratulate you for it. But there is another player, if I can put it that way, in this crisis, and that is the Government of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. I guess one of my concerns is that we need to have the overall authority as the Government of Canada, through whatever agency it may be—it's supposed to be CFIA and Health Canada in this case. We need that overall authority. In your case, in your plant, in your operation, you may have been able to handle this kind of a crisis, but there are a lot of other players out there who might not be able to handle it in the way you have.
I just want to outline that in the beginning. Certainly one of my concerns is that we have to look at the industry as a whole, and not just specifically Maple Leaf.
You can answer me if I'm wrong on this, but I understand the cause of listeriosis, in the end, was in fact a slicer. As I understand it, from talking to people in the food inspection business—and you were following, no doubt, the manufacturer's specifications, and you can answer that as you see fit—at one point in time in our food inspection system, auditors would actually go in and they would go further. CFIA auditors, or whatever they were called prior to CFIA, would actually go in and do an audit, do an analysis, maybe tear the equipment apart, and maybe go above and beyond the manufacturer's specifications. That's the understanding; it's not happening now. Maybe you can inform us as to how that specific machine would have been inspected by the government authority in the past versus how it's done today, and how we propose doing it in the future so that this kind of problem doesn't occur again.