Agriculture committee  Absolutely. In fact, that inspection station, as I was trying to explain, is not related to product destined for Canadians or for any other market, which is why the instruction was explicit to Japan and was provided to the individual who at any point in time was working on that p

Agriculture committee  The one thing I would add is that it is an entire system. An inspector is not going to be operating so independently in making a decision that it becomes arbitrary. The training that the president spoke about is a critical element, but that inspector is also going to be supported

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. In the context of the documentation, I take from your question that it's the issue of the documents we would see routinely versus documents when in an investigation. For example, our routine review of documents in support of the demonstration that an establ

Agriculture committee  First and foremost, the products on our store shelves are subject to the same requirements, whether they are imported or produced domestically. That's first and foremost, it is the same set of requirements for those products. Second, there's the oversight system I mentioned, whi

Agriculture committee  Very quickly, not every lot of product that comes in is subject to direct oversight. It is the confidence in the system, and like any other area of activity, we take a risk-based approach, a science-based approach, to defining what's the appropriate sample that gives us the confi

Agriculture committee  There's equivalence on both sides.

Agriculture committee  The agency is very committed to continuing to strengthen the oversight with respect to imports. The complexity I mentioned and globalization mean that Canada sees a much more diverse range of products from an ever-increasing number of countries. The importance of strengthening th

Agriculture committee  Yes, and the Regulatory Cooperation Council's focus on better alignment recognizes that even though both systems are very strong, there are areas of difference, and those areas of difference.... It's not that they're having a negative impact in terms of food safety. What they'r

Agriculture committee  I can't say with identity...but it is very similar.

Agriculture committee  No, transportation isn't a weak link. The entire system, frankly, in terms of the Canada-U.S. movement of goods, is a very strong system. Some 58% of the foods Canada imports come from the United States. They come from a system of which we have a very high degree of understanding

Agriculture committee  Our aim in reviewing the frameworks is to provide greater flexibility so that industry can find solutions to the challenges they face without having to fit into a simplistically predictable and prescriptive model. When we look at existing frameworks, we recognize that industry ha

Agriculture committee  There is certainly a tremendous amount of information on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website. In addition to that, in terms of food safety, healthycanadians.ca is also a great source of information for Canadians wanting to better understand the steps taken by the various

Agriculture committee  Unfortunately I can't tell you off the top of my head if there's a nice, simple, clear explanation. But I think that's an opportunity, because there's clearly an interest.

Agriculture committee  Certainly that's our aim. If, through our actions and our partnership with the various agencies that participate in the regulatory framework, we can prevent the types of situations our German colleagues experienced with contaminated sprouts, then that is exactly what we will do.

Agriculture committee  It is indeed a combination of partners. Our colleagues in the provincial public health systems are important players when something goes wrong. Quite often, the first signal may be an increase in a type of illness that no particular food is associated with, and our provincial cou