Agriculture committee  I can tell you about similar facilities. Holland College has a research centre that is focused very much on what you're describing. They're focused particularly on the food industry, but they're doing market testing and taste testing on the look and feel of products in order to enhance them for the marketplace.

Agriculture committee  That's an ongoing challenge.

Agriculture committee  Things move quickly, and colleges move quickly. They're bringing on new projects. We've tried showcases and databases of projects, and you can't possibly keep up with it. If something is happening, it's going to be happening in a college. We can fill you up with stories and examples of anything you're looking for.

Agriculture committee  The other thing we're very cognizant of is that a lot of the industry partners that come to a college don't have as much information about IP and don't understand the IP regime and what's available to them, so colleges become a bit of an access point for “Who do I go to and where do I do it?”

Agriculture committee  I don't have those numbers, but I will follow up to answer your question.

Agriculture committee  As we said earlier, it is very important to maintain the skills of the current workforce in addition to training the people who are coming into the industry. I think the partnership with industries and companies, to have a conversation and help companies and industries understand what technology is emerging and what the future workforce is going to need and to then develop training—to either access the training that is already available or to tailor-make it so that it can be delivered to employees in the workplace—is an area of tremendous opportunity.

Agriculture committee  I'll come back to you on that question. I'll have to give it a little bit of thought.

Agriculture committee  That is a good question. I will say more or less the same thing I said in response to one of Mr. MacGregor's questions. What matters is how we train people. What matters is not so much the details they are learning during their studies, but how they learn. If young people are exposed to problem-solving and challenged to look at problems in an innovative way, to work in the workplace, and to understand how small-business people, farmers, or producers are tackling the problems, their way of learning becomes different.

Agriculture committee  Maybe I'll respond to that with a general statement and then a specific example. In general, the whole college system is designed to be responsive to the current needs of local industry. We do that through deep connections to those industries, particularly through program advisory committees.

Agriculture committee  This area is really emerging as perhaps the next wave of priority. Dominic Barton highlighted in his reports the need to become what he called a "learning nation", that lifelong learning. I think that is going to be a huge opportunity for colleges to build on the deep connections they have with their communities and their economic development, with players in their regions, and most importantly, with companies and industries that have those needs and see them.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  That's a good question. We are concerned about this in our sector. I think it's something that is not limited to the agriculture sector. It's about helping young people—as well as older people, because, more and more, education is becoming lifelong—understand what colleges and institutes offer and understand the job market better—what training they're going to need and what opportunities are open to them in the future—and then turning those into something that's fairly real and tangible and is going to attract them.

Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the invitation to appear this morning. I am pleased to appear today on behalf of Colleges and Institutes Canada, an extensive network of post-secondary institutions from each province and territory, to which 3,000 urban, rural, remote and northern communities have access.

Industry committee  I think that in general the colleges are probably still in a bit of a start-up mode in relation to having their capacity in applied research well known and well understood. We've been in the applied research business formally for about 10 years now. It's still, as I mentioned earlier, a very small portion of the federal investment in academic R and D or post-secondary R and D.

Industry committee  I could just make a quick addition to that. Mr. Baylis mentioned the technology access centres, the TACs across the country. They are networked through a group that helps to support exchange of best practices and whatnot, but increasingly a network like that is going to be able to have....