Mr. Speaker, hopefully my friend from Selkirk—Interlake will pass along our thoughts to the cattle ranchers, his family specifically, and to others in that area. We understand the devastation that they are going through, unfairly so. I cannot say it often and loudly enough that it is of no fault of their own; they are caught in a situation not of their doing. This is not a fair place for them to be. However, it is a reality in a complex system where one piece of the system, a large piece, has failed. It is a plant that produces 35% of the beef in this country and it has failed us.
However, let me speak to this idea of 170 inspectors that we keep hearing about. Not one of those 170 inspectors went to the meat hygiene plants, which is XL, in Lakeside or in Brooks, or at Cargill or any of the others. They went to ready-to-eat meat plants. That is where they went. We can argue and debate the numbers. We know there are 40 inspectors and six vets in that plant at Brooks. That is true.
My friend talked about HACCP. There is no question that HACCP is a new system that folks have been implementing and that is supposed to work. The reality is that even the CFIA is now saying that the plant personnel, not CFIA inspectors because it is the plant personnel who actually do the spot-checking under the HACCP program, did not understand how to do it.
I do not care what the plan looks like. If they do not know what the plan is and they do not know how to implement the plan and they do not know how to do it because they are either not trained well enough or just do not know how to get it done, I do not care what plan they have, because a plan is bound to fail when folks do not understand how to make it happen.