Mr. Speaker, it relates to a question that I posed to the Minister of Agriculture a back some time ago concerning the Canadian Food Inspection Agency when it comes to Ms. Weatherill's report when it came to the CVS system.
Clearly, one of my questions will be, has the government indeed implemented the CVS and has that audit been completed?
Of course, I partially know the answer to that because the most recent report talks about a third-party review of CFIA food safety inspection resources that is under way and is expected to be completed by September 2010.
Unfortunately, in this House, last fall the minister said it would be this spring; this spring, he said this summer; and now, clearly, the ministry says it will be September.
Clearly, one of the questions is when, and if, the CVS audit will actually get completed, because to date it has not been done.
The other piece relates to the fact that U.S. decided to change its standards for what it needed to have in terms of inspection in Canadian plants and we had to comply if we wanted to export, which meant there was a differential between us for domestic product and international markets. We said we would try to cover that off, and we have been doing that with overtime.
So the second question becomes, is the overtime still continuing? Clearly what we said in committee was the number of inspectors we were supposed to get. Mr. Cam Prince said, during committee, that it takes a while to get folks trained, and as of that time, they had 35 inspectors in the system.
So the third question is, are the 35 inspectors out of the system and on the front line? Are we making any progress in hiring the next 35 inspectors that Mr. Prince said, back in March, were needed and would probably happen in the next four to six months, who then said they got additional moneys from the ministry, which I believe to be correct, and said that would hire an additional 100 inspectors? However, of course, he said it is difficult to find these folks.
It seems to me that we needed 170 front-line inspectors for ready-to-eat meat plants. It was accepted that we needed to get that done last fall, and the government said that there would be money available to hire them. The dilemma becomes, as Mr. Prince, who is responsible for human resources, says, there are only 35 in the system, not inspecting but in the system, getting through the hiring process, through the training process, and not out there doing front-line meat inspection.
Clearly, if we have a need to inspect to ensure that the Americans are getting what they require for export, and we are saying from this side of the House, and this member is certainly saying, that if indeed what we need is to have the same compliance for the domestic market, then how are we doing that when it was accepted that we needed 170 new inspectors last fall before the Americans made the change? We are already short 135 inspectors, by Mr. Prince's own estimates of what he needs for manpower, and we now need more because we are working overtime to cover off the demand by the U.S. that we do something different. We have now said we will do it for the Canadian one. The minister clearly said, during committee, that we are not quite doing it yet domestically when it comes to the same standards to the U.S. He said we are doing it in the bigger plants but not quite in all the domestic plants yet.
So the fourth question for the parliamentary secretary is, do we have them all covered now, or are we still trying to do it with overtime?