We'll call the meeting to order. It is nine o'clock.
I want to welcome everyone here.
First of all, I want to say that the meeting has been called for in camera but we will open in public to deal with the minutes of the steering committee. Those minutes have been circulated. I'll just highlight them. They're fairly brief.
The steering committee has recommended to this committee that “Chapter 8--Strengthening the Aid--Canadian International Development Agency”... As you will recall, we did have a hearing on this, but it was extremely abbreviated arising from the fact of those votes. We only had about 45 minutes. The steering committee is recommending that one additional hour be allocated to that for the further examination of witnesses.
The second issue that's coming before this committee from the steering committee is that, as you are all aware, there is a major international peer review being carried out on our Office of the Auditor General. We expect that to be completed in June. We are recommending to the committee that we have a hearing. We are looking at the possibility of the two leads... This is an international event. They come from different countries, but the leads are from the country of Australia, and we are pursuing the option of having it done by teleconference after the report is tabled. However, since the report is not being tabled in June, it's unlikely this will be done prior to our break. It will probably more likely be done in September or October of this year.
Also, with the minutes of the steering committee you will have attached to that a draft agenda, moving forward. The first is draft reports. When we come back after break, we're dealing with a performance report, “Selecting Foreign Workers under the Immigration Program”, from the fall 2009 report of the Auditor General, draft reports.
The week of the 20th, colleagues, is devoted entirely to the tabling of the auditor's spring 2010 report, and then on the 22nd we will have a public meeting dealing with all those chapters. On the 27th we're going to deal with her main estimates, her report on plans and priorities, her departmental reports--back to draft reports.
Then on the next page, dealing with May, on the fourth we're talking about evaluating the effectiveness of programs--two meetings, a draft report. Of course this could all change, depending on how things move along. Then we're going to deal with departmental performance reports, Industry and Transport, on the 13th, and that's it. Of course we don't have the June tentative agenda.
