I guess the problem, Anne, that I'm trying to get at here—and maybe we need to make a recommendation on this—is that the primary producer is paying the bill in this country, and it's not so in other countries.
Coming to Mr. Kyte's point on imported food, I believe he said we seem to be able to justify what we spend in plant inspections. Those inspections are a cost to the companies you represent, but I don't think the same kind of rigidity is found for imported products.
We have a farm industry that's in huge financial difficulty. Part of the cost structure of that industry is food inspection costs by CFIA and others. When those costs are borne by producers, the cheap imported product coming from places where there's cheap labour and less environmental standards, and certainly not the care of the product that we must have in this country, can drive our farmers out of business.
So my question is this: shouldn't the Canadian government be compensating or covering off the food safety inspection costs as other countries do? And, second, shouldn't imported product have to meet exactly the same, or at least the equivalent, standards that Canadian producers have to meet?
I direct this question to Anne and Mr. Kyte.