Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming today. They were good presentations, and helpful in our study.
I'd like to start with you, Mr. Brown. It's good to see you again, and I thank you for coming out.
The community college network in Canada is going to be even more important going forward than it has been so far, as we try to meet the skills needs of Canadians and of the workplace. In my own province of Nova Scotia, the community college network has really improved in the last decade, largely under the leadership of Ray Ivany, whom I'm sure you know, and now Joan McArthur-Blair. In fact, tomorrow afternoon I'm going to have a tour of the as yet unopened new community college home-based campus in my riding of Dartmouth. It's going to be one of the most impressive post-secondary institutions in the country, community college, university, or otherwise, and I'm very excited about that.
Community colleges have had a beef, and it's a fair beef, I think. I'm not sure if you're prepared to say this, but I think they've been underfunded compared to universities, and in a lot of ways, such as in percentage of operating funds and certainly in terms of research. Community colleges are doing a great deal of applied research, and they can do more.
With this $800 million that has been proposed to go for post-secondary education, I wonder if you're prepared to give me a sense of how much of that should go to the community colleges?