I'd like to acknowledge Patrick Bertrand. If you could stand, so we know who are.... He is the committee's assistant, and he works for the clerk in the Wellington Building. He's often the contact person. If you phone the clerk's office, it's Patrick you may be talking to most times. So now you can put a face to a name.
Another notice that just came in is that the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defence of Germany will be in Ottawa on June 6. The German embassy is preparing a program for the visit and has been in contact with our clerk to explore the feasibility of a meeting of the Parliamentary State Secretary with the committee. He has a brief biographical note, which we will translate and circulate to the committee in both official languages. We'll keep that in mind as we work through our agenda, and on June 6 there may be an opportunity to meet with this person.
We have run out of the routine things to do, and we now have a notice of motion to deal with. Now that we're fully loaded and ready to roll, we'll do that.
I'll give the presenter of the motion the first opportunity to speak, and then we'll have a speakers' list and go through that.
The motion from the NDP, Ms. Black, states:
That the Committee invite the former Minister of National Defence, Bill Graham, and the current Minister of National Defence, Gordon O’Connor, to appear before the Committee to answer questions regarding Canada’s role in Afghanistan.
Ms. Black.