I now declare the 27th meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts in order.
Colleagues, we're here with our Auditor General again and his staff to review Chapter 8, “Disaster Relief for Producers—Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada” of the fall 2013 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
Just before we do that, though, I would like to ask the committee if we can do some quick committee business afterwards. I can tell you the nature of it. First, one of the hearings that we scheduled in our business meeting can't work because the chosen dates just don't work, and so we need to look at an alternative.
Second, we had deferred at our last business meeting the question of the public accounts conference and there are timeframes involved now, so in my view it's important that we deal with that today.
There likely will be time for that, unless the committee wishes to extend longer than normal. I would be looking for about 10, 15 minutes of committee business at the end. It should be pretty quick, and they are timely matters that I do need to put before you. We'll get to that at the end of the meeting.
Unless there are any other interventions, I am ready to begin this public hearing. Seeing none, we will begin as we usually do by asking our Auditor General, Mr. Michael Ferguson, to please read his opening remarks.
You, sir, now have the floor.