As chair of the indigenous and northern affairs committee, I call the meeting to order. Welcome, everyone.
I would like to start by acknowledging that I am joining you today from the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabe and Chonnonton nations.
The committee began meeting and continues to meet for the purpose of receiving evidence concerning matters related to the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today’s meeting is taking place by video conference, and the proceedings are being made available via the House of Commons website. During this meeting, the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.
In order to facilitate the work of our interpreters and ensure an orderly meeting, here are a few rules to follow.
Interpretation will work very much as it does in a regular committee meeting. You have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of “Floor”, “English” or “French”. In order to resolve the sound issues raised in recent virtual committee meetings and ensure clear audio transmission, we ask those who wish to speak during the meeting to set their interpretation language as follows: If speaking in English, ensure you are on the English channel; when speaking in French, ensure you are on the French channel. As you are speaking, if you plan to alternate from one language to the other, you will need to switch the interpretation channel so that it aligns with the language you are speaking. You may want to allow for a short pause when switching languages.
Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name.
When you are ready to speak, you can either click on the microphone icon to activate it or you can hold down the space bar while you are speaking. When you release the bar, your microphone will mute, like a walkie-talkie.
As a reminder, all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.
Should members need to request the floor outside of their designated time for questions, they should activate their mike and state that they have a point of order. If members wish to intervene on a point of order that has been raised by another member, they should use the “raise hand” function. This will signal to the chair your interest to speak.
In order to do so, you should click on “Participants” at the bottom of the screen, and when the list pops up, you will see that, next to your name, you can click on “raise hand”. I'll try to make sure that it comes into my spectrum of vision.
When speaking, please speak slowly and clearly. When you are not speaking, your mike should be on mute. The use of headsets, of course, is strongly encouraged. If you're using earbuds, please hold the microphone near your mouth when you are speaking for our interpreters.
If there are any technical challenges arising in relation to interpretation or if you are accidentally disconnected, please advise the chair or the clerk immediately, and the technical team will work to resolve the issue. Please note that we may need to suspend during these times, as we need to ensure all members are able to participate fully.
Before we get started, I will ask everyone to please click on your screen in the top right-hand corner and ensure you are on gallery view. With this view, you should be able to see all of the participants in a grid view and see one another.
During this meeting, we will follow the same rules that usually apply to opening statements and the rounds for questioning of witnesses during our regular meetings. We have acknowledged up to 10 minutes for opening statements; however, that may change from time to time, and certainly we have some rules for our ministerial guests in our later meeting.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this meeting of the indigenous and northern affairs committee.
Actually, I mentioned 10 minutes, but we have agreed upon a six-minute witness time. That requirement will come into effect later on. Right now our job is to deal with the subcommittee report, which hopefully will enable us to get on with arranging witnesses for the study.
Are there any comments with regard to the subcommittee report?
Hearing none, do we all have the subcommittee report proposals for study before us? Is everyone good? I don't see anyone saying no.
Mr. Anandasangaree, go ahead, please.
