Health committee  No, we have not. The CFIA received part of the $75 million immediately after the publication of the independent investigator's report, which we devoted to meat inspection.

Health committee  I will just make two comments. As I mentioned before, the additional inspection capacity, which is both more people and more training, is a very important part of ensuring a safe system. It's not the only thing we have been doing and the government has been investing in to mak

Health committee  I would say they did agree with the report. They were certainly present at the discussions, and the report was a reflection of the discussions and recommendations that had come from the inspectors.

Health committee  The union did participate when we met with inspectors across the country to understand how CVS was working, and to improve CVS. We had some very good suggestions from our inspectors on what to do to make the system better, and we are implementing those. The union was present, a

Health committee  We have published on our website the number of inspection staff at the CFIA, and the latest statistic from March 2010 is just over 3,300 field inspection staff, yes.

Health committee  The specific numbers for non-slaughter inspectors are not posted. We have a very—

Health committee  Yes, I am the boss. CFIA inspectors do a variety of things. Some inspectors in fact do more than one thing. They do multi-commodities. So at points in time, the number of inspectors can be very different, depending on whether we've had, for instance, plants opening or plants clos

Health committee  I don't have a figure for you at this moment on how many FTEs we have. As you're aware, FTE stands for full-time equivalents, so it would include people employed full-time, it would include people employed part-time, and it would include our shift workers. I don't have that stati

Health committee  Non-slaughter covers a variety of issues. It covers animal inspectors and plant inspectors as well. I do not have that specific statistic.

Health committee  It is important to understand that the number of inspectors is a key aspect of ensuring food safety, and I do go back to my first statement. We have one of the safest food systems in the world. Inspectors need tools and support to do their jobs. We need to make sure that companie

Health committee  Yes.

Health committee  I'll ask Dr. Mayers to handle that one.

Health committee  I absolutely do. As Dr. Butler-Jones has mentioned, I think, we've seen improvements in a number of levels of collaboration and cooperation. Certainly in senior levels in Ottawa, we have better mechanisms, whether they be protocols or meetings, for keeping informed, for making su

Health committee  That would be the PricewaterhouseCoopers work. I should point out also that the contract with PricewaterhouseCoopers was not engaged in by the CFIA. We were really a third party, at arm's length from the work PricewaterhouseCoopers did. We provided it with all the data, all the i

Health committee  We are implementing increased inspection capacities, as I mentioned earlier, in two ways. First, we're bringing on board more inspectors to deal specifically with listeria and also to cover off daily presence. We'll have 170 by the time we're finished hiring; 150 are already on o