Good afternoon, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
I wanted to start by reminding my colleagues and everyone here that pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, April 14, 2016, and section 20 of the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, statutory review of the act, we will begin this review this afternoon by hearing from some officials of the Government of Canada.
We're going to start off this afternoon with Global Affairs Canada and Hugh Adsett, the director general, legal affairs and deputy legal adviser, and Marc-Yves Bertin who is the director general, international economic policy.
I wanted to remind everyone that this is also a part of the Special Economic Measures Act and a number of other acts relating to this piece of legislation called the Freezing Assets of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act. For those who are following this, this is a section in the act that deals with an automatic review after five years. The intent of the committee is to do its legal work based on the aspects of that legislation and then to report back and recommend to Parliament, the minister, and the department as to what we think of the legislation and how it's working in the context of today.
With that, I'm going to turn it over to Marc-Yves Bertin who is going to do a joint presentation. Colleagues, this will be the first hour, and then we'll go with questions for an hour. Then we will proceed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.
I'll turn it over to you, Marc.