Good afternoon, colleagues. I apologize for the brief delay. We are all just arriving at the committee room, which is in one of the buildings farthest away from the House of Commons, where we just concluded a vote only to find out that we will be summoned back to the House of Commons for another vote in short order.
I'm proposing that we hear as much testimony as we can from our witnesses.
We thank you for being here today. We will probably have to excuse ourselves for a few minutes to go back to vote. Given the amount of time that that will likely take, we'll make a determination at that point whether or not I'll ask you guys to patiently wait for our return. Thank you for your patience so far.
We have with us as witnesses, first, from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Brenda McPhail, who is no stranger to the committee.
It's great to see you, Brenda.
We also have, from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Micheal Vonn, who is also no stranger to the committee, together with Meghan McDermott. From the American Civil Liberties Union, we have Esha Bhandari, the staff attorney. You are all coming to us by video conference, except Brenda, whom we're glad to have in our presence here now.
This is the 65th meeting of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, where we're studying the privacy of Canadians at airports, borders and when travelling in the United States.
It will be a very brief study, so without further ado, I will ask Ms. McPhail to lead us off for up to 10 minutes.