First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you this afternoon. We provided a written submission to the committee. I'll highlight some of the key points and look forward to answering some questions.
For those who may not be totally familiar with NorQuest, we're a community college serving the Edmonton region, and the largest community college in the Alberta post-secondary system. Our focus is on creating the pathways to careers that enable the advanced skills in the skilled workforce that are needed in the future economy for Canada. That starts with career programs that lead to jobs--highly skilled occupations. But because of our role as a community college, a large percentage of our student body are new Canadians, so it includes transitioning those highly skilled immigrants to productive roles in our economy. That is a large part of our academic programming. It also provides an opportunity for those who are perhaps underutilized in our economy, such as the aboriginal population. In my brief I note that over 13% of our students are self-identified as having aboriginal heritage. So again, that ensures that everyone can contribute to the Canadian society and economy.
On our career areas, we have a number of areas of expertise that are leading-edge across the country. Besides the usual certificates and diplomas in a range of college programming, we have identified areas that go above and beyond and have roles locally and nationally. Those are areas of print media production; intercultural education; aboriginal education; health care, especially continuing care; and supports for learners who have challenges. Much of the work of our applied research is done in those areas of expertise by our faculty, who are involved in leading-edge activities that take the academic expertise and build solutions with business partners in the print media. In the brief I've highlighted some examples.
We've also benefited greatly from the Western Economic Diversification investment that has helped us create business solutions. Last week we had presenters in Edmonton from California Polytechnic. The print industry from across western Canada came here to learn about environmentally sustainable print media production.
So that's the kind of leading-edge research done there, and that links to my first recommendation, which is to ensure that the federal government invests in applied research. Many of the research models and granting agencies have been defined around the traditional university research model. So the college system across the country—and we're very active in that—is doing more research in partnership with business. We would really like you to look at how you can better support that kind of research that has very immediate financial and business solutions. Another area is intercultural. That entire area works with skilled immigrants working for engineering companies and organizations like that.
The second recommendation is on accessibility to the college and opportunity for everyone. As a result, many of our students come from diverse backgrounds. We've grown over 20% in the last year. With more immigration, greater aboriginal population growth, and the desire of those populations to engage in our economy productively, we're under tremendous enrolment pressure. Like my colleague from MacEwan, facilities and infrastructure are major challenges for us.
We've had some benefit from the knowledge infrastructure investments in the short term. That did some nice maintenance and we're doing some exciting things. But there's the larger, long-term strategy of creating sustainable infrastructure with new environmental standards--creating new facilities and refurbishing the old ones--and creating the kinds of learning spaces the students need. We're really struggling currently with not being able to physically accommodate the learners we have.
The other recommendation is on investing in that infrastructure. The other one that's sort of tied to that is your strategy around the aboriginal population--there are huge waiting lists in that growing population--and looking at how you can make stronger investments to ensure that population is able to move forward and participate in learning.
Those are our recommendations. I look forward to answering any questions you have later.
Thank you.