Good afternoon, and thank you everyone for being here today.
I would like to take the opportunity to welcome our guests to the human resources committee today, as well as the people in the gallery joining us and those watching on television.
Welcome, Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development. Also joining us today is the Hon. MaryAnn Mihychuk, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour. Today we are also joined by the Hon. Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Sport and Persons with Disabilities.
We are also welcoming some senior public servants today. Welcome to Ian Shugart, Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Development, who is joined by Lori Sterling, Deputy Minister of Labour, as well as Louise Levonian, Senior Associate Deputy Minister and chief operating officer for Service Canada. Finally, from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we have Evan Siddall, president and CEO.
Thank you all for being here today. It is our pleasure to welcome you. I hope today's committee meeting provides everyone with an opportunity to ask in-depth questions of these ministers and to get a sense of their priorities, the scope of their work, and their personal insight into where they will be taking their ministries over the next few years.
Today, this committee has a unique and rare opportunity to speak with three ministers in the same meeting. I would personally like to thank them for finding the time and coordinating their schedules to ensure that we could see them all at the same time. It is a pleasure to be able to access your thoughts directly, and it is going to be important for our work to get as much insight from you as possible.
This committee has a mandate to interact with all three ministries to accomplish its goals, which is why I hope that all three of you will feel free to interact a bit when answering questions. If you see that one topic area touches something you are working on within your ministry, please feel free to chime in and provide details on where your ministries overlap in either programs or responsibilities. At the same time, we have a lot of content to get through today, so I would appreciate it if we could keep the questions and answers as short as possible so that we can give everyone as much time as possible.
I should also mention that if something comes up and you don't have the full time to address a specific point or concern, please feel free to write to the committee afterwards to clarify any points or provide follow-up information. The clerk will ensure that your comments are distributed to the entire committee.
Welcome, everyone. Let's begin. We will have an opening statement from each of the ministries, and then proceed to the questions.
Let's begin the opening statements with Minister Qualtrough.
Minister, please begin.