Good morning, everybody. I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to the Standing Committee on Finance. This is our pre-budget consultation study in advance of the 2024 budget.
Just for everybody's understanding about our committee and about this particular study, we've received over 850 submissions to our committee. The analysts have an opportunity to go through all those and the recommendations in them.
We have also hosted meetings in Ottawa, of course. We have not been able to travel as a committee for the last five years. This is the first time we've been able to do it and we are crossing the country. We started out in the Atlantic and we got to every province. In this leg, we were in Quebec City. Yesterday, we were in Toronto, which they talk about being the centre, but we are in the centre right now here in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We're delighted to be here to be able to hear from all of our witnesses.
Two of our permanent members are from Winnipeg. We have Daniel Blaikie and Marty Morantz right here. We look forward to having a lot of local content and questions asked.
We're in pioneering country. We are a pioneering committee and we have something called an open mike. You will see some witnesses behind those who are at the table. They will be going up to a mike and giving a deputation to our committee, lasting about a minute or two. The analysts will be able to capture all of that.
I had the opportunity to hear from this group when we first started this open mike exercise back in 2016. We called them “The Grannies”, but it's the Grandmothers Advocacy Network. Our clerk, Alexandre Roger, tells me they are going to be the first at the mike today.
I think that is terrific. They are going to have an opportunity now to give us their statement.
We look forward to hearing from you.