The only action, Mr. Speaker, to be blunt about it that the government is taking action on, is covering the minister's butt and that is the fact. The minister went into hiding when the issue happened in the summer of 2008. The parliamentary secretary can talk all he likes about money, but we are not talking about money here. We are talking about confidence in Canada's food safety system and we are talking about Canadian lives.
The government had no qualms at all about calling an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber dealings, an issue of some 24 years ago, but gosh no, the Prime Minister would not dare call an inquiry into what took 22 lives in this country, because his minister or his government might have been implicated in the result. What we needed was an open and earnest inquiry so we could get to the bottom of this matter with sound recommendations. Those are the facts. This is about cover-up by the government, and about hiding its responsibility and using an investigator under the guise of an inquiry to cover the minister.