Good morning, everyone. It's still morning.
Now that the MPs have taken their seats, welcome, everyone. Sorry for the delay here this morning. This is the time of year in Ottawa when we have a lot of legislation we have to go through, so we're called up on the Hill quite a bit. Thanks for your patience and also thanks for coming.
Our committee's been very active in the last couple of years dealing with the many trade agreements that have been put forward, whether with Europe, Asia-Pacific or South America, and of course we were very involved with the whole North American trade agreement. We visited the U.S.
Our committee has decided to do a study on how we can get businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to take advantage of all these agreements. We're looking at how people like you can help us, and how we can help you take advantage of that with the small and medium-sized businesses.
Today we have witnesses from various sectors of small and medium-sized businesses. We ask you to keep it around five minutes, but if it goes over a bit, it's okay. It gives us time to have a dialogue with the MPs.
What I like to do is go right to the video conference first, because if there's a glitch, we might have to come back to you.
I think we're going to start right off the bat with the Toronto Region Board of Trade. Thank you for attending, sir. We met with your group when we did our TPP study, I think, in Toronto. Thank you for coming on here with us. We'll kick-start it with you guys. Go ahead.