I call this meeting to order. Welcome, everyone.
This is meeting number 119 of the Standing Committee on Finance. We're meeting on the pre-budget consultations in advance of the 2024 budget.
Just for everybody's knowledge, this committee has received an overwhelming and great number of briefs from right across the country, over 850. It is a record number this year.
This is the first time that the finance committee is travelling on pre-budget consultations in five years, so we are delighted to be able to reach out locally right across the country and to be on the ground. We did the Atlantic provinces and, over this week, we've done Quebec and Toronto. We were in Winnipeg yesterday, and today we are here in beautiful Edmonton, Alberta. We're delighted to be here with all of the local stakeholders being able to share their testimony with us.
One of the things we also do on this committee—we're quite a pioneering committee, and this is a great and right place to be when you're pioneering—is that we have something called an “open mike” for individuals who would have liked to come before our committee but for whom there may not have been a space at the table, yet they would still like to provide a deputation.
We have somebody with us today who will be doing that. We'll ask Ms. Jaskiran Mehta from the Terry Fox Foundation to please come to the open mike and provide us with your statement and your testimony.
Thank you.