Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank all the witnesses for being with us today.
As members of this committee when we have our time allotted--I have seven minutes here--we actually control that seven minutes and we decide with whom we want to share it, and for how long.
For starters, I want to share about three seconds of it with Mr. Williamson. I would like to ask him whether he was or was not--yes or no--consulted by the minister or the department in relation to these particular cuts we're discussing here today, before the cuts were announced.