Finance committee  Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee, Mr. Chairman. We're here today because we believe universities have a vital role to play in improving Canada's productivity and helping Canadians compete and prosper in a highly competitive world. Over the past two decade

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, in fact, in last year's budget, as I indicated in my statement, we did receive $100 million: $40 million to the direct costs of research, $40 million to the indirect costs, and another $20 million to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. The important thing for us

Finance committee  Thank you. Absolutely. Understandably, the indirect costs are not easily captured by everybody. They are really the supports required within a university to support research activity, whether it's computers, networks, libraries, and so on—the kind of regulatory framework that go

Finance committee  I'm shorter than he is, so I'll start first, Mr. Chairman.

Finance committee  The point we have constantly made is that you can't talk about affordability for students without thinking about the quality and the capacity at the other end. We can provide all kinds of assistance to ensure that students get to university, but if we aren't supporting the health

Finance committee  It's more complex than that.

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was a very deliberate choice. Several years ago, the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada decided to support a dedicated transfer for post-secondary education. We know full well that there can't be only one priority on the table and if

Finance committee  Next week.

Finance committee  Yes, certainly.

Finance committee  We're talking about increased support to cover 40 per cent of direct costs -- in other words, the grants provided by the different granting councils. Forty per cent of research cost support should be dedicated to indirect costs.

Finance committee  This is a calculation we made several years ago where we tried, to the greatest extent possible, to identify the costs incurred by universities to support the research performed there.

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin by thanking you for inviting us to appear before the Committee today. Canada is a wealthy, highly developed country with enormous promise. However, over the next decade, Canada faces important labour market competitiveness and demographic chal

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. It is a fundamental part of supporting the research enterprise. We've long argued, and it's in our brief that you would have received late this summer, that this is one of the key components. We have good support to attract talent and we have the infr

Finance committee  What would happen is that researchers looking at where they're going to be able to do their work would begin to look elsewhere very seriously because they would be operating in an environment that didn't support them. The reality is that when the universities don't get fully supp

Finance committee  Thank you. If you were to look at the press release we issued the night of the budget announcements, and many utterances after that, you would see that we did recognize the investments that were made and deeply appreciated them. In coming to the committee today, we were asked t