Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
My name is David Agnew. I'm president of Seneca, which is one of Canada's largest colleges. We have campuses here in Toronto and in York region, just north of Toronto, and in Peterborough. But today I'm here on behalf of Colleges Ontario, the association that's the voice of 24 publicly assisted colleges across the province.
I'm a past chair of Colleges Ontario, but I'm currently on the board of both Colleges and Institutes Canada and Polytechics Canada, both of which have submitted briefs to you in these pre-budget hearings. You have the brief, as the chair said, from Colleges Ontario, and I hope you noticed the consistency across the recommendations from all three associations representing colleges, polytechnics, institutes and CEGEPs across the country.
We are the institutions of higher education that have always been hard-wired to the needs of industry employers in our communities. In this rapidly changing economic environment, our role is more crucial than ever as we prepare our students for the jobs of today and tomorrow. We do so by staying really close to the community of employers, engaging experts and leaders from across literally all economic sectors, both public and private.
Our partners provide work-integrated learning opportunities for our students. They act as curriculum and program advisers; they give us access to leading-edge equipment and software; and, very importantly, they hire our graduates. So, yes, we're educating a new generation of high school graduates, a large number of students who need to augment their general university education, with a professional career-focused credential from a college or a polytechnic. But, increasingly, we're also the way that mid-career employees, either voluntarily or involuntarily, need to modernize or refocus their skills. Of course, colleges and polytechnics are now the destination of literally tens of thousands of international students, many of whom want to stay with their Canadian-earned credential to help contribute to this country's future.
For the purpose of this presentation, since you have the brief, I want to focus on just two of the recommendations in the Colleges Ontario submission.
For our applied research recommendation, I want to illustrate it with an example from Seneca's work. Two years ago we were approached by a small firm based in Richmond Hill in York region. It's called Medical Confidence. It's a kind of navigation service for patients who need to eventually be matched with a specialist for their condition or disease. Working with a team of students and faculty from Seneca, they've developed a machine-learning algorithm that vastly improved their workflow by automating it from a very manual process to an automated process. As a result, Medical Confidence had a big insurance client on a pilot and they signed a multi-year contract. They've expanded. Their revenues have just about doubled and they're hiring about 10 new employees.
When we speak of the impact of applied research, there are hundreds of these kinds of success stories across the country. For a remarkably small investment, the federal government can unleash even more of the ingenuity, energy and talent of our students and faculty. Just looking at Ontario, we see about 1,600 firms, most of them small and medium-sized enterprises, become more innovative with the help of colleges. Of course, many of them are in the key sectors of manufacturing, like Medical Confidence, in digital or environmental products and services. With support from the government, we can do even more. That's why we're asking the government to invest $40 million a year—that's “million”, not “billion”—in new funding for applied research at colleges.
The second recommendation I'd like to focus on is the request to have a second round of the post-secondary strategic investment fund, or SIF. Seneca is one of the grateful recipients of a SIF investment. In fact, Mr. Fergus was at the ground-breaking for the new centre for innovation, technology and entrepreneurship, as the parliamentary secretary to the minister of infrastructure. We have matched it on a two-to-one basis—our two, your one—to build that centre. It's an extraordinary building that will live up to its name. As the expanded home of our campus incubator, our engineering and mechatronics hub, and our new data analytics research centre, it will be opening in December.
Like many of our colleague institutions, thanks to SIF we are creating terrific, purpose-built spaces for students to learn and innovate, for faculty to teach and mentor, and for industry partners to engage and grow. The first round of SIF also helped us reduce carbon emissions with energy-efficiency measures, and colleges continue to play a leading role in Canada's action plan on climate change. This includes everything from developing new programs that prepare students for the low-carbon economy to capital improvements on our campuses that move us towards net-zero emissions.
We want to build on this success and with your help we will.
I would be more than pleased to speak more fully about these recommendations or the others contained in our brief and answer any questions you may have.
Thank you.