Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'm pleased to be here substituting for my colleague Peggy Nash, who is dealing with a family health crisis at the moment.
Thank you to the witnesses. There are so many different areas of questioning one could pursue.
In a general way, it may be known to you that this committee has been looking at the impact of the high Canadian dollar on various sectors. I'm wondering if you could comment, perhaps the two representatives from BIOTECanada and CATA, on the impact on the service sector.
Secondly, I'm interested in pursuing the human resource side of the question a little bit. You have spoken about the overall shortages, the intense competition, and so on. Can you comment on whether there is a regional nature to that, how the problem is distributed across the country, and any recommendations that you might have?
Thirdly, there was a bit of discussion early on about the issue of attracting more women into these jobs. I'm struck by the fact that there are some very creative projects that have been started up from time to time to try to deal with this, but they always seem to be very limited in duration because they're on a shoestring in terms of the kind of funding, and it comes out of some innovative initiatives. But there doesn't seem to be any kind of durability to some of those projects. I'm wondering if you can comment on that from the point of view of any public policy recommendations that you might have.
Thank you.