Colleagues, let's begin our meeting today.
First of all, welcome. Thank you for attending the meeting.
Ladies and gentlemen, today we have, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, November 15, 2007, Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters). We have the honourable minister before us this morning for that, which I hope we can deal with in the first hour.
Colleagues, following the first hour we will also have the minister with us, but we will be dealing with a separate bill, Bill C-18. We can go into that in the second hour.
As well, colleagues, I'm going to ask that we have an additional fifteen minutes—and we probably don't need that long, but an extra fifteen minutes—to deal with committee business at the end. We will do our best to speed it along, but we do have some committee business.
Without further ado, I would like to welcome the honourable minister, Mr. Peter Van Loan, leader of the government in the House of Commons and the Minister for Democratic Reform.
Minister, I will ask you to introduce your team, and then we will allow you some time for an opening statement.
Colleagues, we'll follow the usual procedure of a seven-minute round of questions. And, members, in front of you is the legislative summary for Bill C-6, an Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters). Although the minister is here and has a number of bills before us, it would be very helpful to stay focused on this particular bill. We'll deal with the other ones as they come up.
Minister, I'm going to offer you the floor for your opening statement, please. Welcome. Could you introduce your team?