Good morning, everyone.
I call this meeting to order. This is the 29th meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance in this session.
This is the first meeting dealing with the pre-budget of 2010. Thanks to all of you for coming in this morning. This session will operate as we typically do in Ottawa.
We have a large number of witnesses here this morning. I apologize for that, but we've had over 400 pre-budget submissions, so we try to hear from as many people as possible in a very short period of time. I'll list the organizations and we'll have the organizations present in that order.
You'll have five minutes for an opening statement. After that, we'll go to questions from members.
With us here this morning, we have the Federation of Canadian Municipalities; the Mining Association of British Columbia; the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada; the British Columbia Cattlemen's Association; the National Association of Computer Consulting Businesses Canada; the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter; and the Surrey Board of Trade.
We can start with the FCM. We look forward to your five-minute presentation. Then we'll just go down the line.