Thank you, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to share with you the progress that has been made by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on the recommendations made by Sheila Weatherill.
We are working closely with all the players in the food safety system, including producers, processors, other levels of government, and consumers, to improve food safety for Canadians. All of us--government, industry, and consumers--share responsibility for an effective food safety system. Our food safety system in Canada is among the best in the world.
As my colleagues have noted, the government's recently released food safety progress report sets out our progress on the recommendations of the independent investigator. I would like to briefly highlight three goals against which we have made significant progress: inspection capacity, communications and information, and collaboration.
First, on inspection capacity, significant new resources have been added for food inspection activities. We are hiring 170 additional inspectors. As of this week, we have 150 of those inspectors on staff. The rest will be hired and trained over the next few weeks. This will improve our capacity significantly.
In addition, significant effort has gone into improving our training program for both new inspectors and existing staff.
While our initial effort is focused on training new inspectors, more systematic and updated refresher training will be delivered to all inspection staff. This training will help agency staff keep abreast of developments in science, technology and new testing methods.
The second area I will highlight is communications and information. Recognizing that an informed public is an important factor in the fight against food-borne illness, we are using new means to provide better information on food safety risks. The consumer centre section of the CFIA website has been redesigned to provide more information on important food safety issues and to more clearly explain the roles that consumers, government, and industry play in food safety. In addition, we are in the process of setting up a consumer round table as an ongoing mechanism for better communications between the CFIA and consumers. Technology such as Twitter is being used by the CFIA to communicate information on food safety issues and recalls.
We continue to engage with Canadians through national public information campaigns. We are also sharing more information on lower-risk recalls and on food-producing establishments that have had enforcement actions taken against them.
In terms of collaboration, the CFIA continues to work closely with its federal food safety partners, the Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada. The CFIA has worked with the Public Health Agency to develop a comprehensive risk communications strategy that will guide how the agency communicates to Canadians during a national food-borne illness outbreak. Health Canada and the CFIA are improving and validating detection methods for listeria and other hazards in food to reduce testing time and enable more rapid response during food safety investigations.
Several of the Weatherill recommendations were directed at industry. The CFIA is meeting regularly with representatives of industry and uses these opportunities to assess how best to work together to further improve food safety within the context of our regulatory responsibilities. As I noted, we have one of the best food safety systems in the world due in large part to the professionalism and dedication of agency staff and staff in Health Canada, Public Health Agency, and the collaboration of our partners. We will continue to work with our partners to improve the system and to inform Canadians of our progress in this very important area.
Thank you, Madam Chair.