Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
My name is André Bolduc, and with me virtually is Wes Cowan. We are both licensed insolvency trustees, federally regulated by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and we appear on behalf of the Canadian Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Professionals, or CAIRP for short. I am the immediate past chair, and Wes is the current vice-chair. CAIRP represents nearly 1,400 members and associates working in consumer and commercial insolvency and restructuring across Canada.
As frontline professionals, we work directly with Canadians in financial distress and, as the only professionals authorized to provide formal legal debt solutions to Canadians, we see first-hand the consequences of household debt.
I will now turn things over to my colleague, Wes Cowan, on the trends we are seeing.