Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank everyone for having appeared here this morning. I understand your frustration at having only five minutes to make your presentation but I can tell you that all committee members share that frustration: we only have a few minutes to ask you questions.
My first question is for Mr. Patillo.
A number of student associations and educational organizations have told us about the situation in Quebec and the rest of Canada. They are all calling for more funding in order to make postsecondary education more accessible.
I saw in your brief that you put the figure at $4 billion a year. The number that we had seen most often in presentations to the committee is $4.9 billion a year. People are asking for the investment to be brought back up to 1995 levels, before the cuts, taking into account inflation and the increase in the student population. In your brief, you also talked about going back to the levels of 10 years ago. So I would like to know what explains the difference of nearly $1 billion a year between these two figures.