Official Languages committee  Good morning, Mr. Chairman, committee members and partners here present. First I will introduce myself. My name is Kenneth McRoberts, and I am principal of Glendon College in Toronto, but I am here today as chair of the board of the Association des universités de la francophonie

Official Languages committee  The main source of our funding is Canadian Heritage, which provides us with operating funding every year. There are also contributions from the member universities of our association.

Official Languages committee  First of all, I spoke about students from immersion school programs. Among our institutions, a large number of students have studied at immersion schools and are now at the university level. So these are francophile students. It's also true that some of our members—this is the ca

Official Languages committee  That's an activity that is mainly coordinated by the Canada School of Public Service. When I mentioned immersion, it was mainly to talk about the possibility for francophile students from immersion schools to pursue university studies in French at our institutions.

Official Languages committee  All our institutions are either francophone or bilingual. Either all programming is in French or it is in English and French. Most of our students are francophone, but that varies considerably from one institution to the next. At an institution like the Université de Moncton, vi

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  Yes.

Official Languages committee  That varies considerably from one institution to the next.

Official Languages committee  We're preparing a bursary project for immersion students so that they can study at our institutions. For them, that often means they have to travel to another city because we only have 13 members. So the bursaries will cover travel expenses and the expenses involved in living in

Official Languages committee  No, but this is a project we are currently submitting to Canadian Heritage.

Official Languages committee  They represent approximately 7% of students at our institutions. That's not very high. We would like that number to be higher. We have the capacity to accept more international students. In general, the classes at our institutions are not enormous. There is an opportunity to acc

Official Languages committee  Indeed. We would like to take in more graduates from immersion school programs who could further develop their French. Once in Ottawa, they would be able to take on bilingual duties. I think it is distinctly more effective to make them bilingual before they enter the public servi

Official Languages committee  I don't think it's necessary to establish those kinds of partnerships with anglophone universities. In general, our institutions offer English second-language programs for francophones. I believe we could develop that capability at our francophone institutions instead.

Official Languages committee  I think that's an interesting perspective.

Official Languages committee  Every institution proceeds in its own way, individually. In the case of my institution, we have a whole series of contracts with the public service to prepare public servants, particularly in the Toronto region. I believe it's the same model that is used virtually across the coun