I'd like to welcome everybody to the third meeting of the Standing Committee on Health of the 39th Parliament. We want to encourage everybody to take their seats, and we'll proceed as quickly as we possibly can.
I want to thank the minister, the Honourable Tony Clement, for joining us this morning. I understand that time is tight and we only have 45 minutes with the minister, so we don't want to delay getting to him.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, and Jane Allain, general counsel, legal services, thank you for coming.
I welcome you all to the Standing Committee on Health. We want to get right to it. We are introducing Bill C-5, the Public Health Agency bill.
I want to remind the committee that the minister has a very tight timeline, so we'll restrict our comments specifically to the bill. The minister will soon be coming back to the committee to talk about other issues.
I'll remind the committee, before we get into the questioning, that it's a different process when the minister is here. There are 15 minutes for the official opposition, 10 minutes for the Bloc, 10 minutes for the NDP, and then 10 minutes for the government side. Then we'll proceed with five-minute rounds.
We'll start with the minister's comments.
Thank you for coming.