Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to cold Ottawa. I welcome the witnesses that we have here today. As you know, our committee is doing a study on the priorities of Canadian stakeholders having an interest in bilateral and trilateral trade within North America. Of course, we're talking about our two present trading partners in NAFTA, the United States and Mexico.
Our committee started this study a couple of months ago. We've already visited the western United States. We were in the states of Washington, California, and Colorado. In a couple of weeks, we're going to be travelling through the Midwest and down, then finishing up in Washington.
As many of you know here, it's a big trading bloc we have with our North American counterparts. We want to see it continue to grow and expand because it's good for jobs, not only in Canada, but in the United States and Mexico.
I think we have five witnesses here on deck. If this is your first time as a witness to a committee, we would like you to do your submissions within five minutes. Keep in mind not to go too quickly because the translators have to translate it. Then we'll open up the dialogue with members of Parliament.
Again, thank you for coming. We'll start off right away. By video conference, we have Sandra Marsden, president of the Canadian Sugar Institute.
Go ahead, Sandra.