Let me respond in a somewhat different way this time. I did reference the fact that some provinces are reducing their investment in post-secondary education, which I think is inappropriate at this time.
Also, we do have great regional disparities. In Quebec, in Montreal many of the CEGEPs are virtually at capacity. They're full. If you go to the Gaspésie and to Lac Saint-Jean, you will find capacity availability, but where it's needed, unfortunately, it doesn't exist. I'm not targeting Quebec here. The same is true of the institutions in Toronto. They are operating at capacity.
I remember visiting Red River College in Winnipeg when I first entered this sector. In talking with the president, I asked how things were and what were his issues. He said, “We have capacity problems”. At that time, four years ago, if you wanted to become a carpenter in Manitoba, you probably had to wait four years to get into a program.
I don't want to be seen as criticizing provinces for this, but as a country, despite our remarkably high statistics, those statistics are not high enough, given our demographic problems. Really, if we want to solve these problems, we have to provide the spaces and opportunities where students are in place.
My staff just handed me some notes about this. At Algonquin College in the fall of 2011 there were 1,010 applications for practical nursing positions. There were 126 available positions. This is an occupation where you can get employment tomorrow, yet approximately only one in nine was able to get in. These are qualified students, by the way; they're not the ones who didn't qualify. In medical radiation technology, which is another very important field with a huge demand, there were 781 applications for 25 seats.
So we have a capacity issue. We're under-investing. That's a big message for you to think about.