Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting to order. We are here today to continue our hearings regarding Bill C-30.
Committee members will remember that when we started the process of hearings on Bill C-30, we decided that we would start by hearing from the minister, and that's how we kicked off our hearings. Subsequently we have heard from people from umbrella organizations in each of the different provinces. We've heard from British Columbia and Ontario already. Today we'll hear from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. We will continue with this process and hopefully complete all of the provincial groupings before we rise for Easter.
I have a couple of comments for my colleagues. You may recall that initially we had agreed that we were going to sit a bit longer today because of the very large number of witnesses we were going to have. As it turns out, two or three of the Manitoba witnesses were unable to be here today. We still do have representation from Manitoba, but it's a much shorter list. So we will go back to our normal finish time of 5:30.
We are also televised today, so straighten your ties, everyone, and pay attention.
With that, I would like to welcome our three witnesses today from the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations: Chief Lawrence Joseph, Vice-Chief Glen Pratt, and Executive Director Jayme Benson.
Gentlemen, if one or all of you would like to make a brief presentation, we would appreciate that. Questions from committee members will follow.
Chief Joseph.