Colleagues, I'll call the meeting to order and welcome our guests.
Monsieur Fréchette, thank you very much for being here.
Colleagues, this is a televised meeting. Before we begin, I have just a couple of quick notes. We may be interrupted by bells this morning. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I have a sense that we'll probably hear the bells ringing at about a quarter after 10 or so. Since we're next door to the chamber, if we still have questions of our guests, we have the ability to stick around here a little longer rather than just leave immediately when the bells start ringing. I'll do a little consensus building at that time and see what we need to do.
Since this will be in all probability our last meeting before the summer, I want to thank each and every one of you for all the hard work you've performed on behalf of Canadians and your own taxpayers. I particularly want to acknowledge all the hard work you did with our most recent report, which we tabled last week, on the whistle-blower protection act. We hadn't had a report like that for 10 years, as all of you know. I have heard, as I'm sure you have heard from many of your constituents and many public service holders themselves, that an update of that act was desperately needed. We had many, many government employees and public servants who were feeling shut out of the process. They felt that they couldn't really go forward to their supervisors, in some cases, with evidence or suggestions of wrongdoing, for fear of reprisal. I think the work you all did on drafting that report, which we've tabled, will go a long way in comforting a lot of our public servants and in fact encouraging them to come forward with evidence of wrongdoing, should they see it in the workplace.
This is, I think, a very memorable—I won't say “historic”, as I'm not prone to hyperbole—and good piece of work that all of you did. I give my thanks to each and every one of you for that. It's going to stand the test of time, I believe. We'll see what happens in five years when we do another review. Congratulations to each and every one of you. You should be proud of the work you did.
Colleagues, I also just want to mention to you that our clerk, Philippe, will not be with us come the fall. This is his last meeting. It's been 18 months since this committee began sitting, and I think we will now be going through our fourth clerk, which I take as a direct reflection of my abilities as your chair.