Thank you.
I am happy to speak briefly on behalf of Crawford Class Action Services.
First of all, I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to appear. We are always pleased to be involved and to participate in the process, especially when the work we are doing involves providing important benefits and consideration to people who are entitled to receive them pursuant to either a litigation settlement, or in this instance, a program.
Crawford Class Action Services has been operating since about 1999. We've conducted somewhere between 90 and 100 legal settlements pursuant to class-proceeding litigation, or government subsidy or other benefit programs where a third party administrator was desired to be engaged.
We've had the pleasure of being involved in such important cases as the Indian residential school settlement, the hepatitis C tainted blood transfusion cases, the Walkerton water crisis in Ontario, and numerous other cases involving medical devices, food-borne illnesses, fraud against the markets, anti-trust or anti-combines settlements—pretty much anything—and of course institutional duty-of-care cases for situations where unfortunate incidents of abuse or interference with people's rights have taken place.
We are pleased to be involved working with Health Canada on the thalidomide compensation program. We began our work in October 2015. We are in place as a third party administrator to execute the program as designed by Health Canada and delivered to us. Within that capacity, we've worked to follow the process that was outlined and to provide service to the survivors and to potential new members of the class who are seeking to be considered in the program as well.
I think that's the extent of our opening comments. I don't really have a lot to add beyond that, except that we are happy to do our very best to answer any questions that may be put our way about our involvement in the administration of the program.
We look forward to the mutually shared learning opportunity that all of us will have from being involved in this process today.