I want to thank all members for their input this morning, and I certainly appreciate the way in which it was delivered.
I will in fact make the commitment to folks that, number one, if we can get cellphone numbers from any individuals, those numbers will belong to just the clerk. In fact, I won't even have them. They will be with the clerk.
The point I will make is simply this. The clerk and I are quickly becoming fast friends, because we're speaking on an almost hourly basis to ensure that we can deliver our meetings to the committee in obviously as professional a manner as we can and to make sure that we have quality witnesses, as we do this morning. We did contact folks by e-mail last evening, and in fact also by phone to offices. I know that all of you didn't necessarily get those messages. Mr. Comartin isn't here this morning, and I obviously will endeavour to listen to what he has to say as well.
I do make the commitment to you that, in future, if we do have a change, as we did yesterday, we will contact you directly, not just to inform you about the decision but to find out if it works for you. But I appreciate the comments and the vein they were delivered in.
I would like to get started. We have a couple of witnesses this morning and they have come from different parts of the province.
I certainly want to welcome both Mr. Muise and Mr. Cooper this morning.
As you are the first outside witnesses we've had presenting, I want to quickly outline the procedure. You'll both have ten minutes to deliver your opening remarks. The process we will work with then is that there will be a round of questioning. We have an order that we will go through. The first round of questioning will be seven minutes in length. The second round and the following rounds will be five minutes in length.
I'll try to give you a little bit of a wave when you get close to the ten minutes. I'll also give you a similar-type indication in the seven- and five-minute rounds so that you will be able to finish your comments.
I know that the committee asked me, when we started to put together the committee and the process we were going to use, that we try to keep as strictly to those timeframes as we can. I'll ask all committee members to do likewise, and that when I do look over and make mention of time, we try to stick to that. We're going to try to accommodate everyone and give everyone the opportunity to ask specific questions.
With that, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Cooper to begin, with Mr. Muise to follow.