Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My name is Tamra Thomson, and I am the director of legislation and law reform with the Canadian Bar Association. With me today is Maître Isabelle Dongier, member of our national citizenship and immigration law section and one of a team of several lawyers who created the submission you have before you today.
Perhaps it would be best to start with a brief distinction among the various groups that appear before you today. The Federation of Law Societies is the umbrella organization of the various regulators of the legal profession, the law societies. And the Barreau du Québec is indeed one of those regulatory bodies within the province of Quebec, regulating the lawyers within Quebec.
The Canadian Bar Association can be distinguished from our colleagues the regulators, for while we are lawyers and all members of a law society, the Canadian Bar Association is a professional association that speaks for lawyers. Among our primary objectives are to work toward improvement in the law and improvement in the administration of justice.
It is in that optic that we have prepared the submission we are presenting to you today, and we look forward to your questions.