Mr. Speaker, on the health and safety front, to use fertilizer as an example because it is in the bill, turning it over to the regulatory process when it comes to additional health and safety measures means it is at the whim of whomever the is minister at the end of the day, as to whether we should go that far or not. One minister might think that is good enough, while another one might think we should go further for protection, rather than it coming back here to decide that.
When it comes to consumers, the adage is that consumers come first, and farmers believe that. They certainly grow healthy products and want to make the best quality they can. They want to make sure people do not get ill. However, at the end of the day, in response to whether there are more or fewer inspectors, if we take 900 people out and add 200 people in, it is minus 700. That is fewer, not more.
I know sometimes some folks might think that less is more, but that is a philosophical argument. If we have half a chocolate cake, it is half a chocolate cake. We may want to have more, or the whole chocolate cake, but the bottom line is that when we cut it in half and someone takes a half, there is only a half left. In this particular case with food safety, if we take some out and do not add the same numbers back in, we have fewer. The system does not function as well as it did before, and consumers may indeed be less safe than they were before, because there are fewer resources there.