I'll call this meeting to order. Thank you, everybody, for being here.
Welcome to meeting number 12 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
The committee is meeting today from 2:37 my time, which would be 3:37 eastern time, until 5:37 p.m. We will hear from witnesses as part of the committee's study on the Nuctech security equipment contract and then we will discuss committee business in camera.
To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules to follow.
Interpretation in this video conference will work very much as in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen to choose “floor”, “English” or “French”, and we would ask you to use the language that you will be speaking.
Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. When you're ready to speak, you can click on the microphone icon to activate your microphone. When you're not speaking, your microphone should be on “mute”.
To raise a point of order during the meeting, committee members should ensure that their microphone is unmuted and say “point of order” to get the chair's attention.
In order to ensure social distancing in the committee room, if you need to speak privately with the clerk or analyst during the meeting, please email them through the committee email address.
For those people who are participating in the committee room, please note that masks are required, unless seated, and when physical distancing is not possible.
We're going to have five minutes of opening remarks from our witnesses. We will go in order. I'll call your names out.
I understand, Mr. Elcock, that you aren't going to be giving a presentation, so we will start with Mr. Charles Burton.
I invite him to make his opening statement.