Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here today. Obviously, we have a few questions.
First of all, you mention in your brief that Australia is going through a more expensive approach in creating stand-alone legislation to create a regulatory body. One of the hints as to why they're going that way is something that we heard in the previous testimony.
According to the Canadian Bar Association, the model of having the regulator also be the professional body has fallen into disrepute. For example, we have the Law Society of Upper Canada in Ontario, and the Canadian Bar Association, which is the professional body and the association for lawyers.
The proposal in Bill C-35 does not separate these different functions into two different entities. I'm worried that down the line we'll have to end up going the route the committee recommended we take the first time, when they came forward with the recommendations a couple of years ago.