Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to be brief. I've certainly seen examples in which local public health officials were prepared to take action when the CFIA was not. I think if the system is working well together, then we should be on the same page. We should be using the same kinds of triggers in order to make those important decisions.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Again, I'm speaking from my experience at the local level, where we're regulating and inspecting food services in the city of Toronto. It certainly is a critical part of our role to have inspectors on-site for routine inspections, and in fact, from time to time, to do a more intensive inspection in which the food preparation process is followed step by step.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Let me start by saying that it's a good thing for food service operators to take responsibility for food safety. That underlies many local food safety initiatives: mandatory food handler training, ways in which we support food service operators to do the best job they can, and others.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  As a local medical officer of health, I feel my primary responsibility is to protect the health of the public. And if I'm trying to make a decision about health protection in the face of some uncertainty, which is a very common situation, I will try to err on the side of health protection.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I'm happy to provide a copy. I didn't provide translated copies.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you very much. Food-borne illnesses, of course, are legally reportable in Canada, but most, as you know, go unreported, either because they're not brought to medical attention or because the diagnosis is not confirmed by laboratory testing. In my reports, we estimated the true burden of food-borne illness in Toronto using methods developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada to fill in the missing unreported cases, and the results indicate that Toronto residents experience over 400,000 cases per year, or to put it another way, about one in six Torontonians gets a food-borne illness each year.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  I can provide a copy.

Subcommittee on Food Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to join you here today. My name is David McKeown and I'm the medical officer of health for the city of Toronto. For context, Toronto Public Health—the organization that I lead—provides public health services to the 2.6 million people in the city.