Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members. Welcome. It's good to see you.
I am here from Winnipeg, where Red River is based, and it's my great pleasure to be here to present about what's going on in colleges, mine in particular.
My presentation will focus on three areas. Innovation is number one and where the primary focus will be, number two is institutional renewal, and number three is student access.
On the innovation side over the last few years, colleges and technical institutes have been embarking on a greater degree of applied research and are working closely with industry. We've always had strong partnerships with industry to do training, but what has emerged over the last few years in both colleges and technical institutes is a greater degree of partnership with industry to do things like applied research, innovation, and, ultimately, commercialization. This is something that we all know is important to the Canadian economy—diversifying, innovating—and we believe that colleges have been underutilized in the realm of research. Our approach is very applied, hands-on, and very pragmatic.
For that reason, we think there are some things that can be done in the tax system that can help to inspire more industry and college partnerships. The focus here today is on the SR and ED program, which is the scientific research and experimental development program. We would like to see the program sustained, first of all, but also expanded. There are opportunities to grow this program. It's already been hugely successful, but more can be done. We would like to ensure that industry contributions within such programs—those provided by CFI, which is the Canada Foundation for Innovation—are explicitly eligible for SR and ED treatment. There is some confusion as to whether the industry contribution that comes as part of a CFI-funded research initiative is eligible for SR and ED treatment.
Number three, we'd like to see the SR and ED potential for a top-up incentive for companies who work in partnership with colleges. We have a tremendous resource here of colleges—150 colleges across Canada in 500 different communities. We think we can further leverage research and innovation activity, and that can be done through a top-up incentive for companies that work closely with colleges.
We would also like to see the opportunity for individuals who emerge from our colleges and technical institutes, who have had that very applied, hands-on, pragmatic training, to start their own businesses, and there may be opportunities to work with colleges to do things such as tax holidays for young entrepreneurs who have their college diploma and want to start their own businesses. Given the strong linkages between industry and community colleges in Canada, we want to continue to support and enhance college involvement in applied research. Page 204 of the 2007 budget cites a project that relates to my institution, and we'd like to see that continued and expanded. That's cited in the briefing document you have.
Finally, on SR and ED, we'd like to see SR and ED expanded to include relevant commercialization activities and work outside of Canada that will ultimately benefit the Canadian economy. We recognize that a lot of the partnerships we're involved in are global, and we believe projects that are global in nature should still be eligible for SR and ED treatment.
I wanted to talk briefly about institutional renewal. Many of our colleges across Canada were built in the 1960s or before, and often to a great extent with federal funds. The infrastructure is in decline in many institutions, and we see an opportunity to reinvest. A couple of ways the tax system might assist us is that the Excise Tax Act could be changed to allow a 100% GST rebate for public post-secondary institutions. There already is a proportion rebated back, but we see the opportunity for a full rebate back that can then be returned to institutions for such things as institutional capital renewal.
This is something we've said many times, but we continue to believe that the separation of post-secondary funding from the Canada social transfer and the creation of a dedicated post-secondary education transfer fund is important for us. Currently education falls into the CST—it's not separated—and there are competing challenges, for instance, related to health, that often take precedence. We'd like to see that as a separate transfer to the provinces on behalf of post-secondary institutions.
Finally, a quick reference to student access, which is increasingly important for us. We see the opportunity to revamp the Canada student loan program to expand the current needs-based grant allocation from one year to two years for students from low-income families and underrepresented groups. We don't have nearly the participation in post-secondary education, either at the university or college level, that we need for the innovation that we need in society, and an opportunity to move from one year to two years would be important there.
Introducing a needs-based allocation process geared to assisting middle-income families.... Currently the cut-off is such that even middle-income families can't afford to send their young people off to post-secondary. We would like to see some changes around the student loan program and then a renewal of the Canada millennium scholarship program, or, by another name, introducing a similar program that will continue to meet the needs of students on a needs-based grant. It's been a successful program, and we would like to see it, or a similar program, continued.
That's my presentation, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity.