I want to thank you for the confidence in the election.
I want to welcome each one of you here. I am a new member of this committee, and we have a number of other new members as well: Monsieur Gaudet; Ms. Mendes, who is not here today; and Mr. Lobb. I think that would be about it. Many of you have been involved in this committee before, and you have done a lot of good work. We want to continue doing some good work.
I've had the privilege, in the past, of serving not on the public safety committee but of being the critic in opposition for the.... In those days we were called the “solicitor general” committee--Marlene will remember that--which was later basically transformed into public safety and national security. After leaving as solicitor general critic, I became vice-chair at foreign affairs and then chair for four-and-a-half years, and then, lately, chair of the Afghanistan committee.
It's kind of good to come back to prisons, parole, police, and CSIS--or at least that's what we used to have. I think Marlene served with me on the national security committee that Prime Minister Martin struck in, I believe, 2004 or 2005, or one of those years. So I've had a little bit of service on these kinds of issues, and I certainly look forward to serving as your chair.
Mr. Holland, I look forward to working with you as vice-chair, and also with Mr. Davies.
To each one of you, I would like to see a committee where there's a degree of cooperation, integrity, and getting some work done. We've been given a number of pieces of legislation that will eventually make their way to us. When you look at the Standing Orders, the job of this committee, although we are masters of our own destiny, is to do the business of what the House sends to us. So we look forward to that.
Mr. MacKenzie.