Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, I will just ask Mr. White to provide the breakdown of that $113 million, and then I'd like to provide an overview of the implementation plan and how the money will be expended.

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chairman, within the food and consumer safety action plan, we have allocated the funding on a proactive basis and have developed work plans against several priority areas. The first is in terms of active prevention, including better understanding of food safety risks, with investments over time to allow us to better analyze, with other partners—Health Canada, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and globally—information gathered through the marketplace and through our sampling and testing programs on how we can become most effective in expending those moneys for the best protection of Canadians and global consumers.

Agriculture committee  I think Canada's food stacks up against any country in the world.

Agriculture committee  We will keep it there against increasing threats and, again, to rising international standards.

Agriculture committee  I'd like to make a few comments and then ask Mr. White, our chief financial officer, to provide the details on the financial position of the agency. It's critical for the committee to recognize that we have seen significant growth. We owe a lot of credit for that to this committee and the government over the past number of years.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. The reference to barriers there is a reflection of the fact that we are cognizant... Again, the CFIA inherited 13 acts and 40-plus regulations when it was created in 1997. Some of that legislation is quite dated. Some of it is quite prescriptive, written in a different time, when risks were different from what they are today.

Agriculture committee  I believe the report was intended to portray the reality that we have made previous attempts to modernize some of the legislative tools. We have authorities in certain areas, for example fish, that we do not have in fruits and vegetables. That's the nature of the acts and regulations we inherited.

Agriculture committee  That's correct.

Agriculture committee  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Agriculture committee  We've been working very closely with the industry, working well up to July 12 and since the July 12 implementation date, and the industry certainly fully understands the ramifications of the implementation, both internationally and within Canada. What we did is we sat down and developed an enforcement strategy based upon cooperation, compliance, and education, knowing fully that we were going to encounter some problems.

Agriculture committee  Again, I think it is safe to say that some provinces were better prepared than others. That's also a reflection of the ability of individual provinces through their treasury boards and their budgeting processes to make sure they were able to provide the supplementary funding in a timely manner to the industry.

Agriculture committee  I'll try to address the last part. We are not aware of any budget cuts being imposed on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency at this time. CFIA was one of the first group of 17 agencies and departments assessed under the new expenditure management system developed by the government, under what's known as strategic review.

Agriculture committee  There are record-keeping obligations associated with the regulations, but for that level of precision, I'll ask Mr. Libby to respond, please.

Agriculture committee  The goal of a national meat standard in this country is a goal that we still actively pursue. But I'll ask Mr. Prince to address your question.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question. When rule 2 came into effect, or the proposal around rule 2, the initial intent of rule 2 was to reinstate measures that were in place prior to May 2003. So there were no provisions within rule 2 specifically that dealt with tuberculosis.