The minister responsible for the food licensing and inspection program, which applies largely to restaurants, accepts all five recommendations from the Auditor General on how to improve the effort but noted that her report was done at the height of COVID-19 activity.

AG Denise Hanrahan pointed out numerous shortfalls as government was unable to even achieve the minimum number of inspections.

Service NL Minister Sarah Stoodley says her recommendations are fair but many of the shortcomings came at a difficult time for those in the public service.

She says the Chief Medical Officer of Health, at one point, asked the environmental protection officers to stop doing inspections and to do COVID-related work so that actually took them out of the system for a while. However, she agrees that they have to have more consistency across the province.