Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the standing committee for the opportunity to present to you.
My name is Rosie Goldstein. I'm the vice-principal for research and international relations at McGill University.
Canada's universities are strong contributors to the science, technology, and innovation agenda of our country. The top 15 research-intensive universities, also known as the U15, win the majority of competitively allocated Tri-Council funding awards. In 2010-11, this amounted to a total of 74% of funding, or $1.4 billion.
In 2009, these universities graduated approximately 55% of master's students in Canada and 75% of all Ph.D.s.
Our universities also have an enormous impact on the economic well-being of this country. A 2010 SECOR study estimated the economic impact of McGill alone on the Quebec economy to be $5.2 billion, and this has grown since that time
Over the past several years, the Government of Canada has recognized and supported research and talent through investment in numerous seminal programs. While this support has been welcome, there are additional steps we can take to ensure that our universities are able to continue to contribute to our society.
In particular, we would ask you to consider support to research, infrastructure, and international partnerships. I will take each one of those topics in turn.
On the research side, Canada's three federal granting agencies—the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada—as well as funding organizations such as Genome Canada and the indirect costs program, provide the foundational funding critical to supporting Canadian research.
This funding allows students and researchers to explore a great variety of issues, such as treating memory loss in Alzheimer's patients, studying how baby boomer managers and corporate leaders are crafting their pathways in firms and businesses, and exploring the links between living conditions in childhood and the effects on DNA that persist into middle age and beyond.
Support for the three granting agencies has been variable over the last couple of years. Last year's budget announced reductions to the agencies over two years—that is, for 2012 and 2013. Budget 2012 also announced reinvestments in the three councils' research programs that offset the 2012 budget reductions; however, for 2013 the councils are facing $37 million in cuts.
We would ask for renewed, stable, and predictable support for these funding agencies, which are so critical to Canada's ability to address pressing health and social questions.
On the infrastructure subject, in spite of recent investments by the federal government, McGill is confronted with an enormous infrastructure challenge caused by the disproportionate costs of deferred maintenance of its buildings.
More than 30% of McGill's buildings were constructed before 1940. The last study, which dates back to 2007, estimates McGill's deferred maintenance deficit to be $648 million. We expect that amount will be revised to more than $1 billion when the next Quebec-mandated study on deferred maintenance is conducted in 2015. McGill's two historic campuses are therefore in serious need of sustained investment.
Support for research infrastructure through the Canada Foundation for Innovation, or CFI, is essential for universities. Similarly, the 2009 knowledge infrastructure program, or KIP, provided much-needed support for our infrastructure, and a second round of this program would be very appreciated and welcomed by the university community, as would a more long-term infrastructure program.
Finally, I want to talk about international partnerships and their importance.
McGill is one of Canada's most international universities. More than 20% of McGill's students are international, almost 8,000 students in all. In the last decade, McGill attracted more than 1,100 outstanding new professors, almost 70% of whom were recruited from outside Canada. More than 150 of these recruited from outside Canada are what we call “repatriated Canadian stars” who had been recruited away from Canada in the earlier decade.
We have an opportunity to capitalize on these international connections, but this requires key investments in internationalization, such as supporting study abroad programs for Canadian students, providing seed funding to support international research collaborations, and funding bilateral or multinational research initiatives. These efforts would allow undergraduate and graduate students to gain the international experience and learning that is necessary today in our global society.
We could also build international and intersectoral partnerships, allowing us to strengthen not only the links between Canadian and international universities but also between Canadian universities and businesses abroad.