Good morning, everyone. I'm being passed the baton here. We're a tag team.
I have a couple of our other priority areas within our advocacy program that certainly feed into a conversation about productivity.
In our pre-budget submission, a second item of our proposal was related to demographics, population, and immigration. We all know that Atlantic Canada is facing a demographic challenge. Deaths now outnumber births. Without positive net migration, either from other provinces or internationally, the population will stagnate, with consequences on labour supply, economic growth, productivity, and the growing tax base that we require to support an aging population.
We are fortunate that Prince Edward Island has indeed been on a roll in the last number of years. We are a leader in Atlantic Canada in population growth, which is primarily due to our success in attracting and retaining international immigrants, as well as consistent growth and investment in the diversification of our economy.
The chamber recommends that the federal government continue to support the Atlantic immigration pilot, part of the Atlantic growth strategy, and programs that link immigration to employment and business opportunities, like one that our chamber runs and others do in the region as well, the connector program, which has been very effective in increasing that retention that's so important for new immigrants. This is funded in part by the department of immigration, refugees and citizenship of the federal government.
Other areas of concern, which again link directly to productivity, are educational attainment and skills levels. As an advocate of business, we've been active and consistent in recommending improvement in our provincial kindergarten to grade 12 system and improving linkages between post-secondary education providers and the business community.
As K to 12 is primarily a provincial jurisdiction, we won't comment more here on those matters, but we would like to comment on the area of transitioning graduates to work. Research, which reflects particularly on what is considered poor integration of new entrants, suggests that successful transition is negatively affected by an education-labour market disconnect, leading to overqualification in some areas, too many people with the same qualifications chasing a limited number of jobs in others, and some lack of effective incentives.
Our chamber suggests that the federal government review all federal programming directed at the transition from school to work to ensure that the level of funding and program designs are meeting current labour market challenges and needs. Particular attention should be given to work experience and work permit requirements for international students, which is a growing population, particularly at the University of Prince Edward Island, for example, now representing over 20% of enrolment.
There are a couple of other areas that we want to comment on and wind up on that are really important in terms of how the federal government is influencing productivity and our economic development potential in the region. As I said, Prince Edward Island has been on a roll and we've benefited from a number of unique economic development partnerships and models that involve the business community, the academic and research community, and government partners at all levels. These novel structures that we've created have been important contributors to the economic development results and gains that our province has made over the last decade. I would be happy to speak more about that in the question period perhaps.
There are a couple of related priority areas.
Certainly, the first is NAFTA. The chamber is keenly interested and concerned with the current NAFTA negotiations. Exports are absolutely central to our province's continued economic growth, in particular, exports to the United States. While our economy and our export destinations have been diversifying, the U.S. is still a key partner.
The second area is economic diversification. Our province has seen some very good results over the last decade or more in the diversification of our economy, as a continued way of expanding the economy and improving productivity. The current federal government's innovation agenda has established important support mechanisms, which are very much aligned with the strategies that I just mentioned.
As the chair is aware, I work with the biotech sector in Prince Edward Island, some 52 businesses with over $200 million in sales, a bit of a story that perhaps we haven't told loudly enough across Canada. It's absolutely the new economy and new opportunities for our citizens in terms of jobs and business.
These are high-productivity areas. What we are finding, of course, is that with this growth and success is a shortage of appropriate infrastructure to support that growth, some of that coming from the infrastructure within our academic centres, which has been very important. In terms of enabling infrastructure, we would recommend that the federal government focus on new infrastructure funding, including world-class business accelerators, scale-up facilities, and specialized manufacturing space that can be made available to early-stage and growth-stage businesses at internationally competitive rates.
The return on investment to the Canadian taxpayer from these investments will be substantial, but we need that kind of infrastructure if we're going to continue to grow our economy.
In conclusion, we want to thank you again for the opportunity to provide our comments on behalf of the business community of the greater Charlottetown area, and we look forward to any questions you may have.
Thank you.