Now we're going to go to the orders of the day.
We're breaking this meeting down, colleagues, into two one-hour sessions. The first hour we're going to hear from the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority, and we have Sheila Fraser representing the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. She's accompanied by Nancy Cheng. From the crown corporation, the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority, we have the chief executive officer and of course the accounting officer, Robert Lemire. He is accompanied by the secretary treasurer, Réjean Ménard, and Douglas Smith, the chair of the board of directors.
Before I ask for opening comments from the Auditor General, I just want to point out to the members of the committee that special examinations have been ongoing in Canada for many years now on our crown corporations. They were always done every five years by the Auditor General, and the mandate is set out in the report. Up until about five years ago they were generally used as a tool for management. They were reported to the board of directors on a confidential basis. In about 2004 or 2005, the decision was made to place them on the corporation's website, and this is the first occasion where the public accounts committee has actually had hearings on a special examination. I view this as a positive development. There are at least 50 crown corporations. They employ approximately 100,000 people, they have $185 billion in assets, and they are a very large part of the apparatus of the Government of Canada. So I do believe that warrants a dialogue with the public accounts committee.
So I'm very pleased to have representatives from the Great Lakes Pilotage Authority here today.
Having made those opening remarks, I'm going to turn the floor over to you, Madam Fraser, for your opening comments.