Thank you very much.
I'm very pleased to be here today, and I very much appreciate the opportunity to contribute to this discussion.
Let me say, having presented before the Standing Committee on Finance in two provinces regularly over the last decade, that each time I come I'm always encouraged by how passionate Canadians are about the quality of our society, and you hear it in the voices around the table here and in the prior panel. I want to thank the members of the standing committee for doing the work you do. I can imagine that it gets tough at times, but it's extremely important.
In my comments I will add to some of those you've heard already today and, as I understand, in some of the other presentations made to you as you've travelled across the country. Let me say that I speak as an individual citizen, as principal of McGill University, and also as chair of the Standing Advisory Committee on University Research for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. In this regard we have a lot to be grateful for in Canada, having a deeply diversified and high-quality system of universities and colleges, notwithstanding the underfunding that you've no doubt heard plenty about.
Here in Quebec there have been, I think, very creative efforts over the last thirty years to build a very strong system of both education and post-secondary education. McGill is a university within the Quebec system that also ranks on the national and international stage. I believe profoundly as a Canadian that Canada needs and deserves to have at least a handful of universities that do spread the reputation of Canada worldwide, that attract students from around the world, and that have a strong and distinguished alumni group of networks around the world. McGill is also a national university: 57% of our students come from within Quebec and 25% from across Canada; the rest are international.
The federal government has a profound role to play in the research enterprise that is so strongly affiliated with universities in Canada. Canadian universities in the western world provide more R and D contribution to society than any other university sector. If we look south of the border, the differences are quite dramatic.
If you think about the various concerns you've no doubt heard about on this committee, from agriculture and farming, to health care, to nursing, to housing, to education, Canada must have systems that add value and are of high quality. If we don't have this level of quality and preparation of people who compete on the world stage, we won't have the investments, jobs, and activities at home on which we depend. The federal government has always had a role in university research, in graduate education, and in the preparation of highly qualified personnel, and I urge the government to stay the course in that regard.
Just ten years ago we were losing our very best talent. It wasn't a numbers game; it was literally that top talent, field by field, was being lost from Canada, because in the mid-1990s the federal government, along with provincial governments, took out their investments in post-secondary education, and at the federal level they dramatically cut the investment through the research granting councils.
It was only in the wake of understanding the dilemma that was being created--indeed, the crisis that was being created--in having the kind of talent on which we depend for success that reinvestments in the granting councils and new, innovative research programs were created. For the first time the federal level in Canada created the four pillars of investment upon which a great knowledge society depends; that is, research granting councils' support through the Canada research chairs program; graduate programs and the millennium scholarships for highly qualified personnel; and for the first time, indirect costs, meaning that the full costs of research funded by the federal government were beginning to be addressed--though we've not gone far enough in that--and major infrastructure support.
We've succeeded on the basis of that. We've recovered our lost ground. We've gained great advantage, but we now need to stay the course.
I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you.