Thank you very much. I'll get right to my speaking points.
We're obviously very pleased to be here today representing APCCC, which is a publicly funded consortium that comes together to identify common strategic goals and share resources and best practices, etc.
We have five community colleges that are members of this consortium, representing all of the Atlantic provinces. We have over 25,000 full-time students and we're in over 50 communities. I think that speaks to the notion of why we call them “community” colleges. We're in larger centres, such as Halifax, and we're also in small communities of 3,000 to 4,000, in places like Alberton, in Prince Edward Island, where we just recently built the new training facility.
Community colleges help to revitalize communities. This is how we do it. Number one, as you would expect, we provide a skilled labour force. We're a labour force developer. We're also a collaborator and partner with the private sector and with governments in policy and in helping to leverage our resources to reach the objectives of the respective organizations. We're an employer, a large one, and in fact in some ways we are actually in the business of training--that's how we view it. We're a purchaser of goods and services and therefore we are a community developer.
Whenever you get a college in a community, the economic spinoff from each one of those areas is substantive. Just to give you a sense of the economic impact, it's estimated that the community college consortium produces over $2.9 billion annually for the economy. The return on investment--and I wish my investment portfolio was doing this well--to taxpayers is 13% and to students 17%. We have spoken to our provincial governments about this being a wise investment of taxpayers' dollars.
Colleges, of course, are responsible for developing a skilled workforce and helping industry reach its objectives. In a recent study by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, they said they need six college graduates for every university graduate. Not only is there a need for college credentials and training, but 90% of our graduates across the region are employed.
We're also called upon when new initiatives emerge in the community. For instance, on Prince Edward Island we've set up a bioscience consortium. The college was asked to design two new programs to support that industry. The same could be said in Newfoundland and Labrador in the oil and engineering field. The same could be said...and let's hope shipbuilding goes to Nova Scotia.
We're also key parts of a solution when an industry gets into trouble and they either need to retool or are financially struggling. Colleges often get asked to come in and do some upgrading and skills....
When we talk about our labour force, I'm sure all of you are aware of what the issues are. The challenges are daunting. We have a shrinking labour force. The ManpowerGroup reports that 29% of companies are looking for skilled workers.
The problem is that when new industries come to town, you can't just take those people who are unemployed and plunk them into an industry, because often they don't have the necessary skill sets. We also know that 70% of new jobs require some type of post-secondary credentials. One of the challenges we face in Atlantic Canada, which is not uncommon across the rest of the country, is in regard to our low literacy and numeracy levels: they are substantive, at up to 35% to 40% depending on the province.
What this all boils down to is that it's projected that by 2031 there will be 2.7 million vacancies for skilled workers. What's the solution? We've talked about and you've talked about immigration. We've talked about raising the overall rates of participation in PSE; 30% to 35% of students do not go on to post-secondary education. We need to have more outreach and more support services for what we call the underrepresented groups: aboriginals, persons with disabilities, and people with lower socio-economic status.
If you take a look at Statistics Canada and the four quartiles of levels of income, when you look at college representation you see that each one of those levels is equal across the bar about who attends colleges. If you look at universities, I think you know which way the scale will go. The third and fourth quartiles--in other words, persons with higher levels of income--tend to go to university.
The people who need the most support in order to be able to contribute to our economy are many of the ones who have come to the college system. We have large numbers of single parents--women in particular--who are trying to make a life for themselves and their families.
So what are the solutions? Well, one of the things that has happened, for which we're most grateful, is that KIP came along. With the recession, there can be a good news story. I know that Atlantic community colleges benefited from the KIP funding. It did help us take care of some of our wait lists, but I have to share with you that there is still a need for more bricks and mortar and for funding for capital equipment. Our programs are not lecture-based; they're hands-on programs. You must have the technology and you have to lead in the technology.
Barack Obama has said that if the U.S. or any economically developed country wants to compete, they have to be able to compete educationally. Those who train and develop the brightest will succeed. That, I think, is what we need to look at. Despite our receiving KIP funding across the region, you can see that there were 8,000 qualified candidates not going to the college system. These are people who meet the entrance requirements.
The other comment I'd like to make is that I think we need to put more energy into the underrepresented groups. There are significant literacy challenges. For many people, it's not that we don't know how to help them; we just need the resources to help them. Each college has a story to tell about somebody who was 32, who got laid off or whatever and who had taken a different path out of high school, but who suddenly came back, got their academic upgrading, and now has gone on to a career and is contributing.
The other area we need to work on is the area of innovation and productivity. We know that our productivity levels here are dropping. We need to address that, so we're looking for research funding.
Lastly, we're asking that there be a separate envelope for colleges in the transfer agreement in 2014.
Thank you.