Citizenship and Immigration Committee on May 3rd, 2006

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

My name is Barry Devolin. I am the member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, which is a riding in central Ontario. Part of my riding is actually in the GTA as well. I was first elected in 2004, almost two years ago.

I also look forward to the work on this committee. I don't have a lot of background on these files, so I'm trying to get up to speed as quickly as possible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Rahim, go ahead, please.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and congratulations to you and the vice-chairs.

It's a great pleasure to be here again. My name is Rahim Jaffer, and my riding is Edmonton—Strathcona. I was elected in 1997, so I've been around for a little while. I had a chance, at least, to work on this committee the last time around, and I'm happy to say that we achieved some good things. I think we had a good spirit of work towards each other, and that was exciting. With the new members we have joining us, I'm hopeful that tradition will continue. I think it will.

I look forward to working with all of you on some of the pressing issues that, as Andrew said, we had started to deal with in the last round. Hopefully we can continue that.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Good. Thank you.

Nina, go ahead, please.

[Nina Grewal, Conservative, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Congratulations to you, Mr. Chair, and to the vice-chairs as well.

My name is Nina Grewal. I come from the beautiful province of British Columbia, and my riding is Fleetwood—Port Kells.

I was on this committee before, and I'm really very happy to be working with all of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Ed, go ahead, please.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Hi. My name is Ed Komarnicki.

Again, congratulations to the chair and the vice-chairs. I look forward to getting to know you and to working with you.

I was elected in 2004. I represent the riding of Souris—Moose Mountain in southeast Saskatchewan. It's a progressive little area. We have quite a bit of economic growth there and some immigration issues that relate to that.

I'm the parliamentary secretary to the minister. I'm hoping that we'll have constructive time with regard to the many issues that immigration is facing or will be facing in the next while.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

I don't believe we have all members of the committee here, but we do have about five members on the committee who were on the committee last time around, so we're fortunate to have that continuity and to have you, Andrew. I keep hearing great things about you, your knowledge of the committee and what have you. It's good to have people on the committee who have a knowledge of it.

Now, where do we go from here? I think we have motions that we can pass out. You can have these motions and look at them over the weekend, and we'll deal with them on Monday.

Go ahead, Rahim.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Is that going to be the job of a steering committee, or are we going to determine the schedule of meetings this committee wants to have--when and how frequent? Are we going to do that today or not?

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

No. I think we'll be doing that on Monday, actually getting the schedule worked out and what our order of business will be. The meeting days, I'm informed, are Monday and Wednesday at 3:30.

[Rahim Jaffer, Conservative, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Monday and Wednesday. Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Norman Doyle]

Yes.

Are there any other questions you want to vet before we adjourn until Monday?

Thank you. The meeting is adjourned.