Pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, October 25, 2006, Bill C-257, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code, I call the meeting to order.
I just want to say thanks to the witnesses for being here today, and I apologize for any challenges we had by changing the room. We may be missing a witness or two as a result of the room change, but we do need to get going so we can make sure we have enough time to answer questions.
We had a steering meeting, which we'll discuss a little more afterwards, but one of the suggestions that came out of the steering meeting earlier today was that we try to limit speeches to a couple of minutes and get to some questions. I know we're not going to be able to convince our witnesses to change their minds at all, so we want to get to our questions as quickly as possible.
Once again, you can have some preamble, but the witnesses are here, and we're here to ask them questions. Try to make the best use of that. This was a suggestion of the steering committee, so I will just pass it along.
What we'll do is start now with Mr. Stewart-Patterson.
We have seven minutes each. We will start round one with seven minutes for questions and answers; round two with five minutes; and, with any luck, round three, which will be a little bit shorter, with five minutes as well.
Welcome, Mr. Stewart-Patterson. We'll have your seven-minute opening, please. I will let you know when you have one minute left.