Welcome back. We're back in session.
Thank you to those joining us remotely for standing by. Welcome to those who are here in person.
If you weren't here for the first part of the meeting, I just want to welcome you. We are in hybrid, so those of you online have access to the floor audio, which is the real-time language being used, or to the English or French interpretation. If you want to chime in, you can use the “raise hand” function and then take it down.
For those joining us remotely, we ask you to mute and unmute yourselves. For those here in person, we have a team here that will do that.
Folks, we were 45 minutes late starting today because of the votes. We normally go through and have five-minute opening statements from each of the witnesses. We have four different groups and individuals represented here today. Only one of the opening statements was received in bilingual format. Those were circulated.
We have until no later than 6:10 today. First of all, I apologize for the late start, but that was beyond our control because of votes.
This is going to put our witnesses on the spot. On Friday, we do have an hour of time set aside for in camera report review, and I am willing to take that time if our witnesses, on short notice, would be available to join us on Friday. You don't have to answer right now, but if there is any hope of having you, our time slot is 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., Ottawa time. That's when we would be looking at inviting you back to continue today's discussion. I don't know if we can get a thumbs-up if anybody knows yes, no, absolutely not, or “I'm not sure”. We do want to hear what each of you has to say, and that is the easiest time we could make available. It will just help me guide the opening time.
I saw one thumbs-up.
We have Dr. Christian Leuprecht from the Royal Military College, whose notes have been distributed in bilingual format, so we could also ask to forgo an opening statement to save five minutes there. We could do abbreviated rounds for members, but if witnesses would be available to come back, we can carve out some time on Friday.
Okay, we have one “no” for Friday.
If there would be a willingness, we could explore having you back even next week. We'll try to squeeze in as much as we can today. We could perhaps also do somewhat abbreviated statements, although that's not entirely fair, so I'll give you five minutes on the clock for your opening statement. If you can cut it off shorter, then we can get into some questions. We'll do, perhaps, an abbreviated first round of questions, and then we'll see if we can get you back to finish off this panel.
With that—