Good morning, everyone. Welcome. This is meeting number 46 of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, for Tuesday, March 27, 2007.
I would like to take this opportunity to remind all members and the witnesses appearing before us that today's committee meeting is televised.
In our first hour this morning we will deal with the main estimates for 2007-08. Appearing before us for her fourth time, we have the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of International Cooperation. The minister testified before our committee on June 6, October 18, and November 1. So we thank her for allocating her time to this committee and being very generous in doing that.
Our committee has been fairly fortunate, in that we have had ministers appear 10 times before us in the last year, including the Minister of National Defence. Today the minister is accompanied by witnesses from the Canadian International Development Agency. We have Robert Greenhill, the president; Diane Vincent, executive vice-president; as well as Gregory Graham, who is with the human resources and corporate services branch.
Welcome.
In our second hour we will be continuing our study of Afghanistan, but this morning we are looking at the estimates under CIDA. Minister Verner will be speaking on the situation in Afghanistan as well.
So I think the minister understands how this works. We look forward to her opening statements and then we'll go to the first round of questions. Because it is the minister here today, the first round will be 10 minutes.
Madam Minister, welcome.