Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Chair, honourable members and legislative staff. I'm Steven Murphy, President of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. I'm joined here today by Susan McGovern, our Vice-President of External Relations and Advancement. I'd like to thank you for the invitation and for including our proudly Oshawa-based university in these important consultations in advance of the next budget.
I'd like to start by recognizing some of the significant support we've received from the Government of Canada in recent years. First, through the post-secondary institutions strategic investment fund, we were able to complete our software informatics research centre, which is having a profound impact on our students, researchers and the private sector.
I'd also like to recognize the recent support we've received from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario in our ACE enhancement project. This support is allowing us to move and to integrate our moving ground plane into our ACE facility—already one of the largest and most sophisticated climatic wind tunnels on the planet—and to turn it into a facility that is truly unique worldwide. Working with our partners from industry, including Magna and Multimatic, as well as the Province of Ontario and Government of Canada, this project is a true example of academic institutions, government and industry working together to change the face of the sector.
Canadian automotive companies can now do advanced R and D here in Canada, decreasing both their time to market and their costs. This is an exciting story of repatriating Canadian automotive R and D. The fact that it's happening here in Oshawa, where manufacturing is such a core part of the history of this community, makes it even more profound. I believe this is one example of the kinds of investments that governments, along with industry, can make to ensure Canada's economic competitiveness.
I'll turn now to experiential learning. When deliberating on where you invest in the upcoming budget to ensure Canada's economic success, I urge you to prioritize investments and support in experiential learning for students and work-integrated learning. In their pre-budget submission, Universities Canada made several recommendations relating to supporting hands-on learning, which I'm happy to echo here: specifically, expanding federal work-integrated learning programs across sectors and disciplines, with particular attention to under-represented groups; increasing work-integrated learning to support employers offering meaningful work-integrated learning placements, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises and companies new to work-integrated learning, including the not-for-profit sector, which will need funding; leveraging existing federal programs and initiatives to reward companies participating in work-integrated learning; and renewing and enhancing the Canadian incubator and accelerator program to support applied student learning and entrepreneurship, which would include subsidies to start-ups for taking co-ops and internships.
Experiential learning and innovation are two of our major focuses at our university. I can tell you that investing in students getting hands-on experience with employers pays off dividends and directly supports our economic competitiveness as a nation.
International mobility of students is another critical area where investment can support Canada's economic competitiveness. We need to ensure that our students have the skills that employers are looking for in an increasingly global marketplace. As outlined in the report Global Education for Canadians, “If Canada is to compete in an increasingly interconnected and fast-changing world, our next generation of leaders will need the experience and connections to operate internationally.”
Currently, only 11% of Canadian students have an international learning experience during their undergraduate degree. That is much lower than our counterparts in France, Germany, Australia and even the U.S. Investing in an international mobility strategy would be one strategy to consider. Universities Canada is proposing a “go global Canada” initiative, which I recommend you look at.
It's beneficial to have Canadian students study abroad, and it's also beneficial to have international students come to study here in Canada. The recent situation with the recall of students by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has highlighted an area of sectoral risk that we should all be concerned about mitigating. We recommend the development of a diversification strategy to promote Canada as a destination of choice for education, which could go hand in hand with the trade diversification strategy.
While institutions will recover in the future through recruitment efforts, there are immediate budgetary impacts this year with the sudden departure of Saudi scholarship students. For example, the direct financial impact on our university is in the order of $3 million, or approximately 2% of our tuition budget. This is a significant impact to a smaller institution such as ourselves, especially as we're looking to increase our international enrolment and to reach sector average in enhanced learning for our students.
The situation in Saudi Arabia has highlighted the challenge that's been the top of mind for Canadian institutions for many years, and that is the need for federal support to promote Canada as a destination of choice to a more diverse set of countries. For smaller institutions like ourselves, the start-up costs for reaching out into new markets for recruitment are significant. As the Government of Canada seeks to increase and diversify trade in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere, strengthening people-to-people ties through educational exchanges, study abroad, will help to build and maintain strong foundations for diplomatic and trade relationships.
With regard to research, we support the recommendation by Universities Canada that it is important to support state-of-the-art research and training by providing significant multi-year increases to the research support fund, building on the fundamental science review recommendations.
We also recommend providing additional funding for equipment and infrastructure. Technology, as we know better than most, is moving rapidly, and funding needs to respond quickly. There are still limited programs to support large equipment costs. Access to small universities is further reduced based on the current program format, guidelines and approach.
As well, we support continued investment in application-driven research through the fundamental research, along with continued investment in Canada's digital research infrastructure. Additional support for innovators, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to help business start up and stay in Canada would also support Canada's economic competitiveness.
I would also like to applaud all efforts in equity, diversity and inclusion to make our professors and Canada research chairs more representative. I would urge the government to remember that gender is one very important piece in a much larger diversity conversation.
In closing, continued investments in all universities, small, medium and large, will create strong local and national economies, as universities produce rich talent and generate relevant research and innovation that leads to enhanced innovative capacity that enables economic growth and societal benefit.
In addition, investment in universities will enhance Canada's global reputation as an attractive place to invest and grow businesses.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present here today. We look forward to responding to any questions you may have.