Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Absolutely.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Six months after the fact is not normal. It would depend on the circumstances and what kind of documentation the inspector might have had to back that up, but to alter the report six months after is not normal.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I was speaking to the inspector the morning this became public, and my understanding was that, in his words, he was asked by his management to come in and make the changes.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  My understanding was that there was an audit team looking at the reports in the course of the investigation of what happened at Maple Leaf Bartor Road and they had questions. They thought there were some pieces missing, and as a result of that, he was asked to come in and add those pieces.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, as we've been saying, more presence means more compliance. It's a historical fact. On the evaluation that was done, the draft evaluation that never went further than that because it was too flawed, even there it showed that for plants that received more visits the level of compliance was higher.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Relatively, yes. Could it be safer? Yes.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I think one of the things you're going to find, if you do a proper analysis of CFIA, is that they need investment in several areas. Beefing up the labs in CFIA certainly is not wasted investment. On the 200 new inspectors, the one thing I find interesting is that they hired 200 inspectors under the invasive alien species program, and at the end of the day you have an increase of 200 EGs in CFIA, which probably means that other programs ended up going down.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  As a matter of fact, I think they do, very much. What I took exception to was the characterization that these people were front-line food inspectors and they were going to somehow alleviate the problems associated with what happened last summer.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  If you had two times the number of inspectors in processed meat inspection and they were able to do all the verification tasks as laid out on paper--which means all the visual checks for pre-operation and sanitation would have been done--I think it's likely that it may not have happened.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Based on our feedback from inspectors in both Quebec and Ontario, they were routinely refused overtime to come in early to do either the pre-operation or the sanitation verification checks. I understand that in some areas that might have been more of a communication issue than an overtime ban, but the effect from the inspectors' perspective was a ban.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Why? As far as why goes, the CFIA would say there are no issues about that. I have no idea. I did approach the same person who told you that about comments along those lines in front of another committee--that was the Senate finance committee--and reminded him of bringing this to his attention last summer.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Because they missed the inspections. They didn't have time. At the time that this took place, that inspector at Maple Leaf Bartor Road had seven facilities that he was responsible for. I know that you heard earlier, from CFIA, that he spent 50% of his time on the plant floor at Bartor Road and that the majority of his time was actually spent at that facility.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  What I'm opposing is putting in place a system like CVS without the resources to do it properly. If it were actually carried out the way it's supposed to be.... If all the test results, for instance, that happened at Maple Leaf leading up to the crisis had actually been analyzed the way a proper-resourced system would have allowed them to be analyzed, they would have seen a recurring trend of positive environmental listeria finds at Maple Leaf.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  No, the changes on April 1 kept them so busy doing paperwork components of the program that they didn't have time to look at all the things they're supposed to look at. If you go back and look at even the pilot project, all kinds of chunks of the assigned tasks were missing and incomplete and not done for lack of time reasons, including these ones at Maple Leaf.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  First of all, I've heard Michael McCain himself say that CFIA needs more resources to verify that what the plants say they're doing they are actually doing. That's what we're saying, that you need more inspectors to do that verification. When you talk about there being no problems related to the resources and that they spend all this time on the floor....