Colleagues, I call this meeting to order. I see quorum and I see that it's almost four o'clock. I'm told that we will have the room and the facilities for two full hours.
The first hour and a half will be with our three witnesses, and the last half-hour we'll go in camera and have committee business. We might lose a little time switching from the public channel to going in camera, hopefully a minimal amount of time. In that time we have a number of things we need to discuss as a committee.
I want to welcome our witnesses at the initiation of this study on rising domestic operational deployments and challenges for the Canadian Armed Forces. I don't know who thinks of all of these long titles. Really it's about aid to civil authority.
With us we have Josh Bowen, faculty, disaster and emergency management program, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology; Michael Fejes, assistant professor and Ph.D. candidate, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs; and Adam MacDonald, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University.
Thank you to each one of you for indulging us. I apologize for being half an hour late, but this is what democracy is all about. We have to vote.
With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Bowen to lead us off for five minutes and then we will go to Mr. Fejes for five and Mr. MacDonald for five, and then we'll go to our rounds of questions. I'm hoping that with some efficiency we'll get in three rounds of questions. Thank you.
Professor Bowen.