Thank you very much.
The presentation highlights a few critical facts with respect to the economic impact of international students in Canada. Some of them are short-term economic impacts and some of them are longer term that are very important.
In 2008, international students spent $6.5 billion in Canada. That was the total value of their cost of living expenses and tuition. That's a $6.5 billion impact across the country, and in fact that translated into 83,000 jobs in communities across the country. This is a very strong economic impact. When you look on a comparative basis, for example, however, with Australia, with two-thirds of the population and a smaller education system, they had an economic impact of $15 billion from international students in 2008. That's two and one-half times what the impact was in Canada. So we could be doing far better.
In the longer term, I would point out that more than 50% of international students here in Canada intend to apply for permanent residency. We have a demographic crisis on the horizon. International students who come to Canada end up with a Canadian credential. They are already well integrated. There are new measures that have been put into place by Citizenship and Immigration called the Canadian experience class, which allows them to stay. So it is a way to address our labour market challenges.