Good afternoon, everyone. We'll get started.
The purpose of today's meeting is to get a bit of an update on where we're at with protected areas and financing. We wanted to bring in departmental officials and hear about protected areas.
I think for me one of the really exciting things that we did early on in our mandate, as this committee, was looked at protected areas. There has been some action and investment made by the government on supporting protected areas in Canada. The committee had expressed a desire to have departmental officials back to give us an update on where we're at in rolling out some of the programs and things. That's really the purpose of the meeting today.
We have a couple of guests. Mr. Hogg, welcome from the government side of things.
Then we have Mr. Aboultaif and Mr. Hoback who will be joining us on the Conservative side. Welcome.
To the government officials, welcome back. There are many familiar faces and you've been with us many times over the past almost four years. It's good to see everybody back. We'll give up to 10 minutes for opening statements from each of the agencies, however they'd like to organize.
Whoever would like to start, please lead us off.