Finance committee  Good afternoon. I'm Paul Davidson, president of AUCC. With me is André Dulude, the vice-president of advocacy. Since I've seen you last, many of you have been out across the country seeing the knowledge infrastructure program at work. I hope you received a copy of our progress report to all members of Parliament last week.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. I think one of the great things about our post-secondary education system is its diversity across the country. If you look at the capacity issues across the country, you get very different pictures. In Atlantic Canada, international students are a critical component of the demographic plan going forward.

Finance committee  Good morning. I am happy to be here in Montreal, the very place where the AUCC was founded. Incidentally, we will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of our association at the end of October. Looking back, we see a century of growth, vitality and diversity. Looking to the future, we see how crucial education and quality research will be for a prosperous Canada.

Finance committee  Thank you. This is something that other countries do quite well. It's something that Canada can do better. We look forward to the release of the review of federal R and D spending in the next two weeks, which we think will buttress the arguments made by the Science, Technology and Innovation Council report last June.

Finance committee  First of all, in a global context, Canada is seen as offering excellent quality education at an affordable price, in a safe, secure, and welcoming community. We have a competitive advantage in this, and we can grow that further. Second, we've got capacity in many parts of the country to bring international students to Canada, so they can not only study and return to their country of origin but can also become Canadian citizens.

Finance committee  There have been important changes in the last two years, including allowing international students to work while they're studying and enabling them to stay on past graduation for a period of time. It used to be that if you indicated you wanted to study in Canada and you said you wanted to stay in Canada, it would be a mark against you in the visa application process.

Finance committee  We think that pure, fundamental research is critically important. We also see the value of applied research. If you look at the diversity of Canada's universities, some put emphasis on one area, others put emphasis on another. I'll give a very local example. This afternoon I'm going with my son, Michael Davidson, to ÉTS, école de technologie supérieure, where there are 4,000 students, 2,400 of whom have co-op placements.

Finance committee  We've been very pleased with the steady investment in research over the life of this government, and the government that preceded it. It is absolutely fundamental to our competitive advantage. I think in each of the last six budgets, there's been an increase in research and development spending.

Finance committee  It's going to be important that every qualified student have the opportunity to attend university in this country. It's one of the things that makes this such a strong country. It's true that tuition fees have increased. So have the forms of student financial assistance. There are still barriers, I acknowledge, and I want to speak to some specific barriers in a moment.

Finance committee  It builds on the question that Mr. Trudeau asked about on pure and applied research. The first thing to keep in mind is that these processes are non-linear. It's not like a manufacturing process where you start with an idea and proceed directly to a market. But there is more that we can do within the university community to make sure that every student has a better appreciation for the opportunities in the private sector and to have hands-on research experiences, to have that joy of discovery early in their academic careers, not simply taking the notes they have been taught for many years but having that joy of discovery and seeing the ability to take that discovery to reality.

Finance committee  Yes, we did make a submission to the R and D review. Again, keep in mind that the purpose of that review is to find out how we can increase private sector investment in research and innovation.

Finance committee  Thank you very much, Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone. I am very pleased to be here today. I would like to congratulate the committee for the advice it provided to the government on the budget. Last week, 65 university presidents from across Canada came to Parliament Hill to show how universities are putting ideas to work for Canadians.

Finance committee  One of the things AUCC has worked quite closely with has been...we contributed to the recommendations of the Jenkins report last year, which focused on how we increase private sector investment in R and D. The record shows that government investment in research has been quite sustained and quite large, but it's really attracting additional research investment from the private sector that's most important in terms of getting Canada up to international levels.

Finance committee  Our recommendation, in recommending increases in research spending and innovation spending, is that there be more opportunities for university students, both undergraduate and graduate, to work in the private sector as part of their program. There are programs like the Mitacs initiative that have been very effective at linking small and medium-sized enterprises with graduate students doing real work in real time that is creating value in the local economy and providing the students with important research opportunities.

Finance committee  One of the important recommendations of the Jenkins report is to look at finding ways of engaging the private sector more thoroughly and earlier on in issues of research development and innovation. It's interesting that, in the American experience, there's far greater flow between graduate students and the private sector.