Good afternoon, everybody. We have a long session ahead of us, so we're going to start on time.
Welcome, everybody, to meeting number eight of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.
First, I'd like to thank everybody for coming today. Today, we have several witnesses to welcome to our committee, along with a number of people in our gallery all the way to you guys in the back and Canadians who are watching live from home on their TV sets.
I would like to welcome the Hon. Bardish Chagger, Minister of Small Business and Tourism; the Hon. Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science; and the Hon. Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development.
Along with the ministers, we have several senior public servants, officials from each department. I'd like to welcome you all for appearing before the industry committee. I'd also like to thank everybody working behind the scenes as well who have helped get all three ministers here today.
The mandate of our committee is vast and covers all three of your portfolios. We're thrilled that logistically it worked out so that we could meet you all at the same time. In fact, three ministers for three hours may be a committee record.
As a committee, we understand that a question may not pertain to just one ministry. Please feel free to ask any of the ministers questions, or the ministers can have other ministers answer those questions too, if it crosses over. We have a lot to accomplish today. There will be a lot of great discussion and perhaps some tough questions asked today, but I expect that we can do so respectfully. Everyone is eager to learn what the goals and priorities of each of our ministers are within the mandates that have been given to them by the Prime Minister.
I know we're all eager to ask a lot of questions, so I will keep this brief and I will explain how we're going to do this. We're going to start off with the ministers. Each minister will have 10 minutes. At the end of all three ministers, we will begin our line of questioning and will go from there.
Go ahead. Who will go first?