Good afternoon, everyone.
It's Ottawa, and it's January, and it's winter, and it has hit hard with a vengeance once again. For anybody trying to head home tonight, I wish you all the best.
We're here today to continue our study of the Canadian forest industry. We've had one meeting on the study so far. We're going to hear from officials today for about an hour and a half. In the last half hour, we're going to go in camera to determine where we go from here. That's the process.
At the first meeting, we did a bit of a summary or a reminder for all of us regarding a study done in 2008. It was tabled in the House in June 2008 and it was entitled “Canada's Forest Industry: Recognizing the Challenges and Opportunities”. We looked at a summary done by our analysts on this. We had some discussion and decided that we would move ahead today with officials and then, at the end of today's meeting have a look, as was originally agreed, and decide where we will go.
With that we will get to the witnesses.
We have the new NDP critic here at committee. The revised list of members has been tabled in the House now. I'd like to very quickly go ahead with the elections and, hopefully, elect Mr. Caron as the official opposition vice-chair of the committee.
Is it agreed that we go ahead with that very quickly right now?