Mr. Speaker, first of all let me say that protecting the health and safety of Canadians remains the top priority of this government. Let me be clear that no changes would ever be implemented that would put the health of Canadians at risk.
If I may just talk a bit about food safety, a report on OECD countries evaluated Canada's food safety system and stated that we have a superior food safety system. Why is that?
In our last budget, we allocated $50 million toward food safety alone. The member and his colleagues voted against that. In our previous budget before that, we put forward an additional $100 million toward food safety. The member and his colleagues voted against that. Here the member is concerned about food safety, but when we put forward actual concrete measures and funding to improve food safety, they vote against them.
I will also say that since having been elected as the Conservative government, we have hired an additional 700 new inspectors with no help from the Liberal Party.
The last thing I will say is that we did receive the Weatherill report. We studied the Weatherill report after the listeriosis crisis. We are implementing all 57 recommendations.
This is a strong track record for this government. I do not understand why the member and his government continually vote against food safety and vote against increased funding for food safety.