Good morning, everyone, and welcome back, MPs, from your week in the riding.
As everybody knows, we are the committee for international trade and are a very active committee. We have quite a few things on our plate and we're going to continue. We're dealing with finishing up the European agreement and we have softwood lumber, but right now our focus is on the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. Our committee has been travelling right across the country. We already did the western provinces, Ontario, and Quebec. In the fall, we'll be doing Atlantic provinces and the territories.
We have had many witnesses. We had open mike submissions at many of the meetings throughout Canada, and we're taking submissions up to the end of June from any individuals. For any MPs who do town hall meetings, we're going to take their submissions up to the end of July. We've also had many people representing companies, organizations, and stakeholders. This is a major agreement, as many of you around this table know, and it's going to affect every Canadian one way or another, whether you're a consumer or a supplier.
Today, our main theme is the health care system. We have many representatives here from various sectors of the health care system.
We're doing this a little differently today. Around June, things get a little active around Ottawa. Well, they're always active, but around June things get a little unpredictable. What we're going to be doing now in our committee meetings is having all the witnesses do their presentations, and then we'll have a dialogue with MPs as long as we can. I feel that this is better, because our main objective in our committee is to listen and to hear what Canadians and people involved in the different sectors have to say.
If something happens, we may adjourn. As members of the House, if we have to go into the House, we will, but it doesn't look like there's anything that's going to interrupt us this morning.
Without further ado, we have six witnesses, and we have somebody all the way from Norway.
Can you hear me in Norway, Mr. Labonté? I'll start with you.