Good afternoon, colleagues.
This is meeting number three of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Today we're going to begin our review of key elements of Canadian foreign policy.
As a witness, from Ekos Research Associates we have Frank Graves, the president.
Recently, on December 8, 2008, Mr. Graves made a presentation to the Canada-U.S. project at the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa entitled “Public Perspectives: Emerging Opportunities for Canada-U.S. Cooperation”. I've seen part of this presentation on the website. It contains a wealth of information concerning what the Canadian public thinks about a wide scope of issues in regard to the Canada-U.S. relationship.
Our committee is very interested in what you have to say to us, Mr. Graves. Certainly we recognize that the United States is our largest trading partner, our closest neighbour and our closest ally, so we look forward to your testimony.
I would also like to say that we very much appreciate your coming on such short notice. I guess that's one of the advantages of being close to the city, but we do appreciate your being here today.
Mr. Graves, the clerk passed on the order here. We'll give you time for an opening statement of approximately ten minutes, and then we'll go into the first round of questioning. Each party will have seven minutes. Then we'll go into the second and third rounds.