Thank you.
Good morning. It's a pleasure to be here to talk about employability issues from the perspectives of small and medium-sized companies. As stated, my name is Corinne Pohlmann, and with me is Lucie Charron, our economist. She will be providing a brief overview of the current situation for SMEs in Canada, and I'll then follow up with some of the current challenges that SMEs are facing in dealing with some of these issues.
Before we get started, though, I want to give you a quick reminder of who we are. The CFIB represents over 105,000 independently owned and operated businesses right across Canada. You have in front of you a breakdown of our membership, so you can get a good feeling for where our members are located and what sectors they're in. You'll also note that they're a pretty good reflection of Canada's business population.
I'll now turn it over to Lucie.