I'd be happy to, and I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Bruce on the number one position—no pressure on the head of the CFIA, but it's obviously great news. A lot of work has been done at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency over the last few years to continue striving to be the best.
It's obviously wonderful to be recognized. It doesn't mean that we won't stop working very hard, because this is an issue that matters to all of us, as you said. In the last budget, we reinforced our commitment to food safety by investing another $400 million to strengthen our food safety regime. We hope this will give our inspectors and those who work in this area the tools they need to continue to ensure that our food safety system remains the best in the world.
In addition to that, of course, our government has now invested more than half a billion dollars in various safety initiatives since 2008. These also include enhancing food inspection programs and hiring more inspectors. The significant funding being delivered through our economic action plan over five years is further strengthening our food safety system, and it will include resources to hire 200 additional food safety inspectors and staff.
We're also establishing the food safety information network, which is a network among federal, provincial, and territorial food safety partners and laboratories. What it does is it helps better protect Canadians from food safety risks by improving our ability to anticipate, detect, and respond to food safety hazards.
The funding will also—