Thank you, and good morning to the panel. My name is Paul Charette. I'm the current chair of Bird Construction Income Fund, the immediate past chair of the Canadian Construction Association, and the chair of the Employers' Coalition for Advanced Skills.
Before I ask Pamela to outline our concerns, let me just say that we're here today representing a very large association. We represent over 20 industry association leaders concerned with respect to the current state of our community colleges and technical institutions. Our coalition came together in 2008 to request leadership from the federal government in rebuilding our aging community colleges and institutions across Canada because of our growing concern over the declining state of these important facilities from which our respective industries draw their labour force.
With that brief introduction, I'd like now to turn it over to Pamela.
Actually, I apologize that I forgot to introduce Pamela. Pamela Fralick is the president and CEO of the Canadian Healthcare Association. We'll be sharing our time this morning.