Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I have another question about some of the testimony we heard earlier. If it's necessary to grant overtime in order for people to do their job, do you do that?

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Let me address that.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We've had a number of witnesses here for an hour and a half; that's what we've done consistently over the last two weeks. Mr. Easter has left some of those meetings, so he wasn't here and may not know that, but the reality is that most of the witnesses have been an hour and a half.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Am I hearing you say, then, that the companies were not doing that? They're required to do it every day, and it had to be document-verified. I assume those documents are kept on hand. I think this testifies to the fact that something like CVS is probably what is really necessary, because there's a collection of data that then can be checked and analyzed, which seems to be far more efficient and effective than just someone inspecting on a micro level.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll share my time with Mr. Shipley. Earlier, you left a couple of us with the impression that the only reason this wasn't caught last year is that there weren't enough inspectors--if there had been inspectors, they would have seen the material and would have insisted that the machines be torn down.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, it's CVS again, the reality that you have a series of data and are analyzing it.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  That has been changed now.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  And again, that's why we have put the $250 million into the labs, the 200 inspectors.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  It may not do the trick for you, but it's doing the trick for the system.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  The reality is that only the Liberals have cut. We've added money each of the years we've been in power.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  There was no suggestion at all that this was taking place here. You said that the inspectors could recognize symptoms that lead to listeriosis, and I hadn't heard anybody else say that. You've explained that a bit. So why did they miss last summer's outbreak? It went on for three months.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I want to go on, because you're going places where other witnesses have not suggested there was even a problem. I want to talk about CVS a little bit. CFIA and others came here and said that data trend analysis is an important tool for the future, and that it needs to be put in place.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Didn't the changes on April 1 require that to take place?

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  We haven't heard from hardly anybody else that the problem is inspections, that we need more inspections. In fact, we had a number of witnesses tell us that is not at all what we need. I understand that you'd like to grow your union, and that's part of what you're doing here as well in this whole situation.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Well, the focus on food safety is why we put that extra money and resources into it. This government has been good about that. We put $130 million in, and another $250 million for improving federal labs in budget 2009. We've hired 200 new inspectors, and I guess we have a bit of a discussion about where they've been.