Welcome to the 33rd meeting of the Standing Committee on International Trade in this, the second session of the 40th Parliament.
Today we welcome back Mr. Dhaliwal, who is substituting for Mr. Cannis.
I hope you will pass along to Mr. Cannis our concern. We hope he is well and will be back with us soon. We miss Mr. Cannis.
We have before the committee today, in our continuing study of Canada-South American trade relations with particular reference to Canada-Colombia, representatives and witnesses from the Grain Growers of Canada. Richard Phillips, the executive director, is with us, along with Gary Stanford. As well, from the Canadian Pork Council we have Martin Rice, the executive director.
We are going to begin in the usual fashion with some opening remarks.
Mr. Stanford, I think you were going to begin. If you could give us a ten-minute opening statement, then I'll move to Mr. Rice for further comments, and then we'll go to questioning.
We'll begin, then, with the Grain Growers of Canada.
Mr. Gary Stanford.