In the interests of trying to stay on schedule—which is very hard when you're getting your first panel of the day under way—I want to welcome our witnesses here this morning as we continue our cross-country tour.
For the benefit of people in the audience, we're the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. We have been mandated by the House of Commons to look at three different topics: temporary foreign workers, immigration consultants, and Iraqi refugees. We've been meeting in all the provinces. This is our eighth province, and we'll be going on to St. John's tomorrow to complete our meetings. When we complete our meetings, we'll have had 52 panels of people who have come before our committee and presented their views on all of these topics or one of these topics.
We have our officials with us as well, the analysts who feverishly take the notes and recommendations from people who meet with us. At the end of it all, of course, we will do up a report, which we will present to the House of Commons and to the minister. Your recommendations, believe you me, will be taken into consideration.
I want to welcome today, from the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, Rick Clarke, the president, and from the Nova Scotia Labour Relations Board, Mary-Lou Stewart, who is the chief executive officer. Welcome to you both.
I understand Rick has a presentation to make and Mary-Lou doesn't. We'll go on into questions after Mr. Clarke has made his presentation.
Feel free, sir, to go right ahead.