I find it troubling, to be honest, if indeed we've decided to go in a different direction from where we once were, from CFIA inspectors doing almost all, if not all, of the work, besides the cleaning, sanitation, and ordering certain things, to this model, when we've never proved to ourselves that it really works in a science-based sense. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that a majority of the folks who work in the CFIA are actually scientists, if you will, or have extensive scientific backgrounds. They would be looking to see those verifications actually come about so that they would actually trust the system they've been asked to be part of and so, ultimately, they would have that faith. So I find that really troubling.
But let me take you back through, because I know you had to get through this quite quickly.
When it talks about little real progress since last summer, by “last summer” I'm assuming you mean since we saw the outbreak of listeriosis last year and the ultimate death of 22 Canadians who succumbed to the disease. You outline here that it talks about a hiring freeze, and of course, we have a sense of how many we got or did not get. Those numbers clearly don't add up. There were two new serious breaches of food safety protocols at Maple Leaf plants in Toronto in January and February of this year, according to what you've said in your report. We ended up with a new listeria policy, which was reported on here at this committee in February. Then it was stopped because of the lack of training for inspectors to actually participate in the program.
And according to your tab--and we did get it in both official languages, by the way, Mr. Kingston. I know earlier you thought we didn't, but I believe we did.
Mr. Bellavance, yours is en français?