Agriculture committee  The submission of the strategic review is signed by the chief financial officer and the president of the agency.

Agriculture committee  I appreciate the kind comments of the committee, and I would just like to clarify and to have on the public record the fact that as the current executive vice-president and chief veterinary officer, I am extremely proud of and amazed at the level of professionalism and competency that our almost 7,000 staff bring to the task each and every day in what they do.

Agriculture committee  If you're amenable, honourable member...it's not random testing. This is targeted testing, based on analyses that are determined as to higher-risk products and lower-risk products, and those targets are set and reviewed, depending on findings. There is an ongoing flexibility in the system.

Agriculture committee  Again, I'm not privy to the phrase “communication risk”, because it is not one that we use within CFIA. We talk about transparent disclosure and working with Canadians to understand risk.

Agriculture committee  If I may, I think I've captured the points. I am not in a position to dictate or respond to the first question of when any submission made to cabinet would be made public. As a non-partisan public servant, I am not privy to that information, so I regret I cannot provide you a fulsome response to that.

Agriculture committee  Again, as public servants, we endeavour to the full extent possible to share with the standing committee our views of what we're trying to do and how we attempt to achieve that. But as has been mentioned before, there are processes we have to respect, as non-partisan public servants, that deal with cabinet confidences, which we are not in a position to comment on.

Agriculture committee  Certainly under the food safety action plan a number of those elements looked at how we can better ensure that before the product arrives at the border it has met our standard in terms of working with and reviewing in concert with other countries importing from various countries and, more broadly, sharing inspection reports so we can jointly identify areas where we both have concerns so it can be addressed collectively.

Agriculture committee  We certainly do have an annual residue monitoring plan. Residues can be chemical, they can be biological hazards, they can be direct tampering, and they can be physical hazards as well. That program is published on an annual basis on our website. In addition to our scheduled frequency of testing, we do random and unannounced testing of products entering into Canada, in conjunction with the importers of those products before they enter the marketplace, and we have programming that also tests product in the marketplace to a single standard, whether it's domestically produced or imported.

Agriculture committee  We recognize again that the risks, as we've said, in food safety are ever-changing, and therefore we're adapting our programs to make sure that the standards we are meeting are those that Canadians expect from us and deserve to have from us, that we are protecting them and their families to the full extent possible, with the best available resources and the best available design of programs that exist anywhere in the world.

Agriculture committee  My time with CFIA dates to the creation of the agency in 1997, in various roles, as you have indicated. As CFIA, we have undertaken both self-initiated and.... Again, as we've tried to make very clear to this committee and to Canadians in all of our communications, we live in a world where risk is ever-changing, whether it relates to food safety and the food supply or whether it relates to animal health and animal disease movements internationally and in Canada, and certainly we've seen the devastation in our forestry sector and in our plant sector as well because of invasive species and climate change.

Agriculture committee  Thank you. I can assure you that our laboratory...we have a laboratory, not a research facility. I can only speak to the CFIA laboratory. If there is an Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada research centre, I am unable to speak to their programming. But from the perspective of St-Hyacinthe CFIA laboratory, there are no programming changes being implemented there that would result in any job losses whatsoever from that lab facility.

Agriculture committee  The mandate of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is established under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency Act. We are not aware of any efforts on the part of Parliament to review the CFIA Act or to change the mandate of our organization.

Agriculture committee  Yes. As was indicated in response to the previous member, those areas where we have implemented—that is, our avian influenza efforts—have been made public. Other areas that we will be moving on will be done through a consultation process and full disclosure and transparency, not just with stakeholders in Canada, but again, recognizing our international obligations.

Agriculture committee  They are done on an annual basis, as we relook at our targets.

Agriculture committee  We can table what has been submitted to the international program on our surveillance activities, yes.