Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning.
On behalf of my colleagues, I'd like to thank the committee for the invitation to appear today to discuss our department's supplementary estimates (C) for 2012-2013 and our main estimates for the fiscal year 2013-2014.
As you noted, Mr. Chairman, Minister Ashfield will join us in the proceedings shortly and will have opening remarks to make, so I intend to keep my comments very brief.
If I could, Mr. Chairman—and thank you for your kind words—I would like to begin by telling the committee how honoured I was to be appointed Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans on January 14, 2013. As some of the members may know, I have had the pleasure of working in eight federal departments for almost 30 years. For over 15 of these years, I've served at the assistant deputy minister, associate deputy minister, and now the deputy minister level. I feel very fortunate in that regard.
Members may also know that over the last 20 years or so I've had the occasion to work in a few different positions in Fisheries and Oceans Canada and had the opportunity to work alongside the coast guard, and I'm very grateful to have been given the opportunity to return to DFO as the deputy minister.
Mr. Chair, I know that committee members have a full appreciation of the important work that is undertaken by the department and the Canadian Coast Guard, on a daily basis. And I know, based on the number of times I have appeared before the committee in past years, that there is an appreciation of the efforts of the men and women of DFO and the Canadian Coast Guard to implement such an important and challenging mandate.
In the short time since my return, I have had the opportunity to reacquaint with old colleagues in DFO.
I've met many new colleagues since my return to the department a few weeks ago. Mr. Chair, I feel very capable and very fortunate to have inherited such a dedicated and accomplished senior management team at DFO and CCG. A few of these colleagues are with me today and, I believe, are not strangers to this committee.
With me are David Bevan, on my right, our associate deputy minister;
Marc Grégoire, commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard; France Pégeot, senior assistant deputy minister of strategic policy;
Kevin Stringer, who's our assistant deputy minister of ecosystems and oceans science; and Trevor Swerdfager, assistant deputy minister of business transformation and program policy.
Once again, Mr. Chair, I thank the committee for the opportunity to appear here today.
If the committee is in agreement and there are no questions for me, I would ask our CFO, Roch Huppé, to provide the committee with an overview of our 2012-2013 supplementary estimates (C) and our main estimates for 2013.