Hello Mr. Chair, members of the committee, ladies and gentlemen.
On behalf of the board of directors of the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne, or ACUFC, on behalf of my colleagues here and on my own behalf, thank you for this invitation to present our comments and recommendations in person, which for the most part are included in the brief we submitted in July for your committee's prebudget consultations for the 2018 federal budget.
Before I talk about the contribution that colleges and universities make to the productivity and competitiveness of businesses and Canadians, I will begin with a brief introduction of the ACUFC and provide an overview of the colleges and universities in Canada's francophonie.
The ACUFC represents 21 francophone or bilingual colleges and universities located in francophone minority communities, that is, outside of Quebec. The ACUFC fosters cooperation among its members, represents their common interests, and enhances their visibility, both in Canada and internationally. The ACUFC helps to carry out pan-Canadian collective projects, share resources, and consequently achieve significant economies of scale.
The colleges and universities of the Canadian francophonie have the dual mandate of offering programs of study, as does any post-secondary institution, and of promoting the sustainability of the communities their serve by contributing to the development of their human capital and to their cultural and economic growth.
Many of our post-secondary institutions are small and some are located in rural areas.
We offer more than 1,150 post-secondary programs in French.
In total, there are over 42,600 students enrolled in our programs. Our institutions produce more than 10,000 graduates each year, although that represents just 8% of all of the anglophone majority programs.
By training the highly-qualified and bilingual workforce of today and tomorrow, the colleges and universities of Canada's francophonie serve as ambassadors for the official languages, Canadian identity, inclusion, and the dynamism and vitality of these communities and the country as a whole.
Federal support for our educational institutions is therefore essential and must go beyond the funding initiatives designed for the anglophone majority, which are rarely tailored to or accessible to the minority, unless the government includes specific measures for the minority.
I will let my colleague Pierre-Yves Mocquais explain how the post-secondary institutions in Canada's francophonie help increase the productivity and competitiveness of business and Canadians and, above all, present our recommendation for the upcoming budget.