Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and honourable committee members, for the opportunity to speak about our association, Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada. My name is Anne-Marie Fannon, and I'm past president. I will share my time with my colleague Kristine Dawson, president elect.
CEWIL Canada represents over 90 post-secondary institutions, universities, colleges, and polytechnics located in every province in the country. Our expertise lies in connecting students to industry and community partners, ensuring quality experiences for all stakeholders. As practitioners, we see on a daily basis the tangible benefits for students who engage in work-integrated learning. They gain real-world experience, develop important transferable skills, build their professional network, develop career clarity, and, in many instances, earn critical income to support their education.
Our employer partners gain access to flexible, cost-effective, student employees, and to a high-quality talent pipeline. Studies done in the U.S. show that student hires make the best source of incoming talent. Former interns receive higher performance appraisals, are promoted faster, and stay longer. When delivered as a true partnership among the student, post-secondary institution, and employer, work-integrated learning is simply win-win-win.
For the past 45 years, our volunteer-driven association has worked to transcend provincial boundaries and have impact at the national level. As Norah mentioned, in 1979, we established an accreditation service which set the standards for post-secondary co-operative education programming in Canada. In addition to setting quality parameters, this led to the establishment of a national definition of “co-op”, which requires, among other attributes, that all work terms in Canada be paid.
CEWIL recently launched a bilingual, national statistics database to collect information on the number of co-op work terms in Canada, including details on location, employer, and salary paid to the student. While we are still working toward 100% reporting from our members, the initial data we've collected on over 112,000 co-op work terms is very promising.
Last year, CEWIL expanded its mandate from co-operative education to all forms of work-integrated learning. With our expanded mandate, we aim to build capacity for Canadian practitioners, creating more pathways to employment for Canada's youth, and establishing national quality standards for all forms of WIL.
In February of this year, CEWIL brought together key stakeholders to engage in a conversation on the future of WIL in Canada. Our event had a broad spectrum of participants, including six ministries of advanced education, the Public Service Commission, StatsCan, ESDC, Universities Canada, CICan, polytechnics, Mitacs, and industry representatives from all of the student work-integrated learning program partners. During that meeting, we explored ways to support the growth of WIL at the national level, including developing common language, data collection, and establishing a national strategy for work-integrated learning. We will continue this work with a second national conversation in Montreal on August 2.
Forty years ago, CEWIL members met with representatives from the federal government to advocate that any federal funds dedicated to co-operative education programming be done with quality and sustainability in mind. We are here to echo that message today. We applaud the federal government's investments in work-integrated learning and encourage further investments that have impact at the system level. While education falls under provincial jurisdiction, the federal government can and should play a role in supporting initiatives that will help build capacity at the national level and better prepare Canada's youth to compete on the global stage.
I will now ask Kristine to share some of our recommendations.