Thank you very much, members of the committee. It is indeed an honour.
We have a former chair of the committee now as vice-chair--Mr. Cannis. I know if I stray he'll straighten me out, because he has the experience of the chair.
I think this committee has historically worked very well. It's as non-partisan, I guess, as any committee in the House of Commons. We try very much to work for the betterment of our armed forces and our men and women in uniform. Hopefully that tradition will continue.
In the reality of today's world, the issue of our defence system here in Canada, whether it's for issues at home.... I think we've seen natural disasters in other countries that have caused a great strain on resources. That's an issue that this committee will be thoughtful of. Of course, there's our involvement around the world, whether it's in peacekeeping or in Afghanistan, or whatever our troops are doing, we'll be very cognizant of all these things that are happening and keep that in mind as we go through our deliberations.
There has been a commitment by the previous government and by the present government to increase our regular and reserve forces. There has been a commitment to re-equip our Department of National Defence. As we go through this, I think there will be lots of issues to deal with, and lots of possible avenues for this committee to take when it's doing its deliberations. I look forward to that, and I think we're going to have a very interesting and vigorous session as we work through this next period of time.
Mr. Clerk, what do we do now?