Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.
Mr. Chair, I just wanted to make a comment that I think would be helpful going forward when we do these sorts of studies. To me, it would be much more beneficial if we had these folks here after we heard from all of our witnesses, so that we could ask them about some of the statements that have been made by witnesses. I just think it's something we should think about as a committee as we go forward.
I want to first focus a bit on policy development. I'm always interested in how policy is developed. This situation reminds me of the old saying, “Hi, I'm here from government, and I'm here to help.” I'd be curious to know if you could help us with the development of this policy. Is this something where the finance minister said to each one of your organizations, “This is what I want to do. Do you think it'll fly?” Or would each one of your organizations have gone to the Minister of Finance and said, “We see an impending problem here”?
I'd just ask each one of you how you would respond to that.