Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Steven Liss, and I am the vice-principal of research at Queen's University. On behalf of the Council of Ontario Universities, I would like to thank you for providing us with the opportunity to appear before you today.
COU is the voice of Ontario's 21 universities. Our campuses are home to nearly 450,000 students, or 40% of all students across Canada. Our institutions are unified by a shared commitment to student success, research excellence, and community engagement. We believe strongly in the power of education and research and its ability to transform individuals, communities, and our country.
I am here to speak about issues that I know are important to you and all Canadians: productivity, job creation, economic recovery, and demographic change. Most specifically, I am here to talk to you about the key role that Ontario universities play in helping you to address these issues.
Productivity is directly linked to our ability to be forward thinking, innovative, and nimble. This means that our graduates must bring well-developed skills and knowledge with them into the workplace. It also means that in a world of rapid changes, our students must graduate not only armed with the skills required for today's marketplace, but also with the ability to evolve their skills to meet the needs of the marketplace of tomorrow.
Ontario university faculty and staff excel at ensuring our graduates are equipped with the foundational skills and experience they require as they transition to the labour force. They also challenge and teach our students to find new ways of looking at old problems, to critically assess and interpret information, and to change their minds and their ways of doing things in light of new knowledge. The tools of their trade are knowledge transmission and self-directed learning acquired through classroom education, as well as hands on experiences in labs, libraries, workplaces, and within communities.
Canada's three granting agencies, NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR, as well as the Canada Foundation for Innovation, provide critical funding to support the training opportunities and experiences our students need to remain flexible and innovative throughout their careers. These investments also allow faculty, students, and staff to develop industry partnerships that catalyze direct economic benefits to Canadians.
Ontario universities encourage the federal government to continue to enhance investments in its core research programs through the federal granting agencies, CFI, and indirect costs of research, with a particular emphasis on student training through graduate and post-doctoral awards and scholarships.
Job creation is about leveraging the talents and skills of Canadians to both sustain and grow the Canadian marketplace. Data analytics is an area of strong competitive advantage for Canada. Canadians are among the best in the world at interpreting and manipulating data, and we are global leaders in data visualization, modelling, and story development.
In his recent speech to the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Harper spoke of the government's commitment to technology. He stated that the government is “just beginning to comprehensively modernize our approach to research and innovation policy in order to get better commercial results for the significant government investments we make in scientific and technological development”.
Data, and our ability to use it, will be the global currency of the future. In order to leverage our existing talents and ensure that Canadians enjoy the economic benefits of this emerging market, investment in and the development of a national framework for data infrastructure is required. Ontario universities encourage the federal government to build on this existing investment in data infrastructure and to consider the creation of a data infrastructure program as part of its commitment to ensuring Canadian research is modern, relevant, and responsive, as well as being globally connected and globally competitive.
Strong economic recovery requires a strong, talented, and diverse workforce. Canadians are our greatest national natural resource. But our demographic make-up has changed and our society is aging. Our ability to combat the effects of our shrinking workforce will be built on our capacity to be more nimble, innovative, and productive than our competitors. It will also require us to strengthen our ability to attract and retain new Canadians and create new and strategic partnerships with others elsewhere in the world.
While we continue to emphasize the value of brain gain, we are in an era of brain circulation. Ontario universities are key partners in all of these activities.
To help deal with skills and labour shortages that are anticipated in Canada's future, we encourage the federal government to make international education and research a pillar of the Government of Canada's foreign policy and economic growth objectives.