Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 8th meeting of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.
I want to do a little housekeeping before we introduce the witnesses and have them give their opening remarks. A request was made by Mr. Thibeault at the last meeting for data regarding the north, specifically Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. The data is unfortunately not available. We won't be able to share it with other members either. I only wanted to let the committee know that.
We'll now go to our witnesses. I'm going to introduce them in the order in which they will present. I think this will be the first time I've broken from the order on the agenda. It's simply because we have somebody by video conference. It always means they feel a bit detached as it is. So I will introduce the witnesses in the order in which they'll present.
First, it will be Michael Deturbide, professor and associate dean at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University.
Next, from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, we have the Honourable Perrin Beatty, president and chief executive officer; and Morgan Elliott, chair of the innovation committee.
From the Information Technology Association of Canada, we have Karna Gupta, president and chief executive officer.
From the Business Development Bank of Canada, we have Michel Bergeron, vice-president of corporate relations; and Pamela Darragh, assistant vice-president, information and communications technology solutions.
From the Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce, we have Ian McLean, president and chief executive officer.
For the organizations here that have multiple people, I assume that you've been informed that you'll have six minutes for opening remarks. If you're going to have both people give opening remarks, you'll need to share that six minutes.
Without any further ado, I'll go to Michael Deturbide, who is joining us by video conference, and let him begin with his opening remarks.