Merci.
I will take the committee's direction. We'll start by adding Mr. Wilson, as Mr. Mulcair suggested. D'accord?
On Mr. Menzies' amendment, in terms of his additions, all in favour?
(Amendment agreed to) [See Minutes of Proceedings]
That's unanimous.
And on the motion as amended?
(Motion as amended agreed to)
That's unanimous. Thank you.
I will seek some guidance from members as to when they want to do the timing. As they know, we're in pre-budget hearings and are quite busy with that, but we will obviously have to add some additional meetings this fall to accommodate the motion. Thanks to all of you.
I want to thank our witnesses for their patience this afternoon. I appreciate it very much. We do have a two-hour session here and we wanted to have this session with a number of the chief economists with respect to our pre-budget hearings.
We have with us today, from CIBC World Markets, Mr. Benjamin Tal, deputy chief economist, and from the Conference Board of Canada, senior vice-president and chief economist Mr. Glen Hodgson.
We have Bernard Brun, Director, Government Relations, and François Dupuis, Vice-President, Economic Studies, from the Mouvement des caisses Desjardins. We also have Carlos Leitao, Chief Strategist and Chief Economist from the Laurentian Bank of Canada.
Thanks to all of you for being with us here today.
Each organization will have up to ten minutes for an opening statement. Then we will proceed to questions from members. We'll start with Mr. Tal.