Mr. Speaker, based on what I am hearing in the House, history seems to be repeating itself because the assurances the government member just gave us in writing are not unlike those given by the Conservative Government of Ontario when it made budget cuts that contributed to the tragic events in Walkerton.
Honestly, I put very little stock in what I see here in writing or in what is being said. It is truly the result and the process that matter the most. The hon. member in question, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture, has a lot to say about the money that has been invested, to the tune of millions of dollars, but if those millions of dollars have been poorly invested, then we are really no further ahead.
I would like to raise two points in particular and ask the hon. member to share his comments on each. In August 2008, before the listeriosis outbreak, an employee at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency read the government's directives that 5% of the agency's funding had to be cut and some of its essential, independent functions had to be transferred to the private sector. This amounted to self-regulation. How can that really be considered an improvement?
The second point is the scathing report by Ms. Weatherill. In her report—