Mr. Chair, it is always difficult to quantify those numbers. It depends on a given day. The workforce is mobile. It depends on who is asked and when it is asked.
I can assure the member that the global number of CFIA employees and front-line inspectors has gone up by some 14% under our tutelage, and we continue to add to that number. The budgets are there to do that. Of course we want qualified people. This is not something that people are hired off the street to do. We continually head hunt for those people.
We are in the neighbourhood of 3,228 inspectors. I have seen numbers that roughly half of those are involved in meat, but of course that number expands and contracts as plants change. We have the unfortunate situation where a plant in Saskatchewan right now has closed its doors for a short time, XL meat processors in Saskatchewan. Right now a number of inspectors have been transferred to other facilities. That number is in flux at all times.