Thank you for that.
As you may know, the opposition and in particular the NDP wanted to focus solely on partisan witch-hunting and an exercise in politics. What the government was able to elicit at the main committee was to broaden the scope a little bit so that we could get some positive solutions on food safety to come out of this subcommittee as well. I think your coming forward is going to definitely help that. I look forward to your report.
I'm sure you're aware that our government has recently taken action to improve food safety. We've hired 200 new inspectors and put an additional $113 million for product safety. I'm sure you're aware that the Conservative government recently put out new directives for listeria control. For example, we brought back environmental testing for listeria, which was cut in 2005 under the previous government and the Minister of Health at the time, and in the last budget, in our economic action plan, we actually invested another $250 million into strengthening our lab capacity around the country to better the lab results.
In looking at these, can you give the committee your thoughts on some of these steps? Do you see them as being positive steps for government and, as we talked about in the beginning, restoring confidence and taking that next step with food safety in Canada?