Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here to speak with people who are our representatives. It's always great to see them in the city where the west begins. I believe that. It's great to see people out of Ottawa, actually, coming out to the roots to find out how we work.
I always say that if you really want to understand the changing social structure of the country, all you have to do is go down into the subway in Toronto. If you can't understand it, then you really shouldn't be in politics.
But if you want to understand the financial pressures that the universities are about, you can stop in Winnipeg and take a walk through Lloyd's buildings or Emõke's. You could walk through the buildings of almost any university in the country and look at the roofs, the windows, and the laboratories. Think of the Laval bridges, and think about the fact that most of the buildings across the country were built in 1963, when I graduated from St. Francis Xavier. Look at where the students live, and look at where the faculty do the research. Start in Newfoundland and go right through to Victoria, at University of Victoria. The picture is quite the same, except maybe in Alberta—but let me remind you, we're not in Alberta right now.
We have a crumbling infrastructure. I'm going to quote and echo a recent AUCC document about campus infrastructure and deferred maintenance. I think this is a pressing issue and an issue that often is forgotten. We heard briefly about a $1 billion trust, but I don't think that's enough. The document says:
Universities are facing mounting costs for repairs to physical infrastructure on their campuses including, among other things, classrooms, residences and other buildings. In 2000, a study by the Canadian Association of University Business Officers on accumulated deferred maintenance estimated that Canadian universities had a combined ADM bill of $3.6 billion--a legacy from the years of public funding cutbacks in the 1990s. That number is likely considerably higher today. At the same time that many campuses face mounting repair and renewal bills and student enrolment pressures, universities are expected to invest heavily in new learning technologies in order to enhance the student experience and ensure that today's students receive training in much-needed technology skills.
If you look around at new technologies that, like biotech, are just beginning to become profitable, then you see, and that underscores the difficulty of remaining modern internally and externally.
Deteriorating campus infrastructure leads to greater health and safety concerns for students and faculty and staff living and working on campus. Deferred maintenance means classroom and laboratory space may not be fully utilized. Run-down student residences can disrupt the day-to-day living of students, and specialized research equipment can become easily damaged and can hamper students' abilities to learn on specialized equipment. And students with special needs may be unable to fully take part in the university experience.
Deferred maintenance refers to both buildings and research infrastructure in Canada. Both need to be dealt with for the long-term health of the country. Laboratories, communications infrastructure such as CA*net 4, and actual facilities at universities are all part of the infrastructure.
We have things like the Canadian Light Source, TRIUMF, SNO, and reactors. They all fit under the rubric of deferred maintenance. They're all as old as I am.
We need a longer-term national strategy for renewal, maintenance, and renaissance. The health of our teaching, research, and cultural enterprise—and it's a cultural enterprise as well, let me remind you—makes it imperative over the next 20 years. It can't be ignored any longer.
I was reminded when I left the hotel this morning, or last night in Ottawa when I went to the ATM.... It wasn't a regular ATM, and I had to pay $1.50 in order to get the transaction done. We should begin talking again about a kind of Tobin tax to cover some of these educational needs.
Thank you very much for listening to me. I hope it was informative.