There was no increase in the number of positions. There has been what I think is a lot of misinformation coming from the government side. There were 46 positions before. There are 46 positions now. That did not change.
When we hear government saying things that are inaccurate, the Canadian public is very intelligent and they can connect the dots. There were 46 positions before and now there are 46 positions.
The important thing to remember in all of this is that over that period with the same number of inspectors, the volume of meat being processed at that plant increased by 20%. With a 20% increase in the volume being processed at that plant and the number of inspectors, regardless of what the government says, was never increased.
This is the real tragedy. On September 13, the government slashed 500 positions from the CFIA and sent out affected notices. At the same time, over the last few years, despite the government's pretense around dealing with what is a very serious issue, the issue of food safety, in that plant, as the volume increased, the number of inspectors was not increased. There was a 20% increase in volume, a 20% increase in the workload and the government did not increase the number of inspectors.
The proof there is that compliance was transferred over to the company itself. It was self-serve safety. It was simply going to let the company take care of itself. The government was not going to increase the number of inspectors, even though the volume was increasing. It was just going to pretend that it had dealt with what should be a very important food inspection system by letting the company take care of it.
The company did not take care of it. Through the evidence that the member for Welland presented, we have seen that over the course of the weeks the tragedy increased. We still do not know how many additional Canadian families will have a severe sickness. We still do not know, given the size and scope of the recall and the fact that it has to stretch right across the country, if other families will be sick tonight.
Through all of that, and this is what I find the most disconcerting being in this House of Commons, we have not had a single government spokesperson stand up and say, “We were wrong to do this.” We have not had a single government spokesperson stand up and say, “Sorry” to the Canadian public, “We should not have cut back. We should have increased the number of inspectors. We apologize for not taking care of you.”
That is what government should do: be responsible. Through this entire week, despite the fact that we have had questions from the member for Welland, the member for Berthier—Maskinongé and repeated questions in the House, we have not seen the minister who is supposed to be responsible stand up a single time this week to respond to the questions about what he knew, when he knew it, whether he understood the impacts of the cuts, whether he understood what not increasing the number of inspectors when the massive volume increased by over 20% meant, and why he did not make any of those key decisions that would have perhaps resulted in our avoiding what is now a second tragedy from the government.
This is really what this emergency debate is all about. This is why the opposition asked for this emergency debate. We are asking for answers. We have been trying to ask questions in the House. The Minister of Agriculture has not stood up a single time to explain to Canadians what happened.
We had a news conference where the CFIA president was trying to give Canadians an explanation but was pulled away from the media by a political staffer. He was pulled away from the journalists who were asking questions on behalf of Canadians and he was not able to respond.
Tonight, we have not had a single representative from the government stand up, look Canadians in the eye and say, “We are sorry. We were wrong not to increase the number of inspectors. We are sorry. We were wrong to cut back by 500 positions the very day that XL Foods was banned from exporting meat to the United States because it was afraid of consumers in the United States getting sick.”
Canadian families deserve to have a food safety system they can trust, so that when they buy that food they can trust that it will be safe for themselves and their families. Canadian families deserve much better than what they have gotten from the government. We would like to hear some answers from the government tonight. We would like it to explain what went wrong and how it will fix it.