Good morning, everyone.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are studying the subject matter of clauses 174 to 199, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Act, of Bill C-60, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013 and other measures.
I want to welcome our witnesses here today and thank them very much for coming on relatively short notice.
We have Paul Chapin, who is here as an individual.
We have Colin Robertson, who is the vice-president and senior fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.
Then we have Lucien Bradet, who is the president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Council on Africa.
We'll start with Paul.
We'll move across with our remarks, and then we can get to questions. We have an hour and a half. I believe we have a 10-minute opening statement from each of you. If we could try to stick within that, then we can follow it up with some questions over the following hour.
Paul, I'll turn it over to you, sir.