Maybe I'll take a quick 30 seconds to explain open education resources a little better.
Traditionally, we look at learning materials as textbooks. Textbooks come from publishers. They have authors. Those authors are compensated for their work. In an academic setting, whether it's a college, a polytechnic, or a university, wherever those materials are used, they often become outdated in five to seven years. Even if there are minor changes in materials, students are forced to buy a newer edition because of a variety of competing interests: the publisher, the professor, and the university itself. We are now seeing a trend whereby students are choosing whether or not to purchase educational materials, and that is completely dependent on how successful they are in the course.
When we talk about the piloting grant and the reason we're asking for a federal strategy, larger provinces, with perhaps a higher density of post-secondary educational institutions—Alberta, B.C., and Ontario—have an appetite, but also the manpower and the resources to dedicate small operating grants to begin projects like this: we have eCampusOntario and BCcampus, and eCampus Alberta existed for a time. This allows a sort of seed funding for professors to be incentivized, to be compensated for their work, and to put it out under open copyright. This work then doesn't have to exist under copyright laws; it's not legislated in the same way. Professors are able to take it and adapt it specifically to a course if they need to do that. Some professors will undertake an updating of resources and then republish them to the main campus website, where other peers review them.
The material is quality and it is scholarly, and students do get quality for the access to this resource. For provinces that don't necessarily have the ability to invest, we hope that with a federal strategy students in those provinces are able to access these resources as well.