Good morning, everyone. Welcome.
It's been a hard week for many of us here. We have friends, relatives, and acquaintances in Fort McMurray, and Fort McMurray is going through a rough patch. Our thoughts are with them as we continue. We hope everything works out as best it can for them out there.
We are going to continue with our international trade committee study on the TPP. Our committee has been quite busy since this Parliament started. We had the European trade agreement that we're finishing up. We did a study on softwood lumber, and we have other various issues, but TPP is our main one. This committee is reaching out to stakeholders and the community at large to find out how much impact this trade agreement is going to have, not only on business and companies, but on average Canadians. It's going to affect everybody, one way or another, and so that's what we're doing.
We've had many meetings here in Ottawa but we also embarked on a trip out west. We did four provinces. We're going to two cities in Quebec and two cities in Ontario next week, then we're going to the Atlantic provinces and we'll go to the territories.
That being said, this morning we're going to have some witnesses here who will give us their opinions, and then we'll have an opportunity for MPs to ask questions and get more dialogue.
This morning, as individuals, we have Jim Balsillie, CEO of Research in Motion. We all love our BlackBerrys.
It's good to see you here, sir.
We have Michael Geist, Canada research chair and professor of law, Internet, and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa.
Welcome, gentlemen. Try to keep to five minutes each, if you can, and that will give us lots of time for cross-examination—it's not that, but that's what the MPs do.
Go ahead, sir.