Good morning. Welcome to meeting number 44 of this session for the Standing Committee on International Trade.
We are pursuing our study of Canada-U.S. relations this morning and are happy to welcome our departmental officials to give us a briefing.
We have had a brief conversation about current events. We have just reviewed this CPAC-Maclean's forum that many found of interest and want to pursue it. Our goal in the short term in our continuing discussions is to visit Washington, probably within the next couple of weeks. We have initiated discussions with the embassy in Washington in that regard. To assist our background and briefing on that, we welcome today officials from the department, including the assistant deputy minister, trade policy and negotiations, Don Stephenson.
Welcome back, Mr. Stephenson.
He is joined by Laurent Cardinal, director general, North America trade policy bureau; Stéphane Jobin, director, North America policy and relations division; Lynda Watson, director of North America commercial programs; and Michael Rooney, director, United States transboundary affairs division.
We will follow our usual practice of asking Mr. Stephenson to begin with opening remarks, and then we'll turn it over to the committee members, who are at liberty to ask questions of any of our panel today.
I'll ask Mr. Stephenson to begin.
Thank you.