This commences our second panel for this morning in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia.
We had a very informative first hour, so let's have a very informative second hour.
Welcome, witnesses.
This is the first trip for the standing committee. This is our first stop, British Columbia. We are going to go right across the country, and we are also going to be doing the territories via satellite from Ottawa.
We are going to be taking submissions from anybody in the public until the end of June, and then we will be going through them. Hopefully, we are going to have a report done before the end of the year and put it in front of the House of Commons so that Parliament will vote on it in the upcoming year.
It's very busy. We had 6,000 submissions from the public last week, and I think we are up to 10,000 now. It is good to see the Canadian public very engaged in what is happening.
This is an important agreement. It's a trillion dollars' worth of trade here. It's one of the biggest trading blocs.
It is not up to us, as parliamentarians here today, to decide if we are doing it or not. We are here to listen, and we are glad the witnesses came.
The witnesses have about five minutes to present their briefs. When all the witnesses are done, we'll open it up for questions from the members of Parliament.
We are going to start with Mr. Duggan from the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association.