Thank you, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs, and all the members of the committee, first of all for leading this study, and for including Mitacs in today's proceedings. It's a real pleasure to be here with all of my colleagues around the table. I think you will find there is a very strong alignment among all of the comments we're here to make today.
I am really pleased to be here representing Mitacs. I hope Mitacs is a name that's familiar to you and that it's an organization you are all familiar with to some degree, but I will give you a quick overview of who we are as an organization and what we do in the interest of providing some context to the points that I want to raise with the committee today.
Mitacs is a national not-for-profit organization. We are based out of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. For 17 years now we have been providing work-integrated learning experiences primarily to graduate students in the form of scientifically valid research internships with industry partners, complemented by a series of professional development and skills training workshops.
Our programming is inclusive across all disciplines, from the social sciences and humanities to STEM, but we also support multidisciplinary research. We work across a range of industries, both in the private sector and in the not-for-profit sector. We work with companies large and small, and our programming is offered both domestically and internationally.
We have grown from the initial focus on graduate-level students, Ph.D. and master's students and post-docs, to the full spectrum of Canadian post-secondary education. We have very recently opened eligibility to our core program to the college and polytechnic sector. We're very excited to see what projects come out of that. That was launched about two months ago. We're currently looking at expanding to undergraduates, initially in Quebec.
We have also recently begun offering a program of first job placements as a delivery agent of the youth employment strategy of the Government of Canada.
All of our programming is based on the research internship model. We're focused on research, entrepreneurship, and commercialization. We are currently delivering about 6,000 internships per year, and we are on a growth trajectory to reach a target of 10,000 internships per year by the year 2020.
I know the committee has heard from a number of witnesses throughout this study. I have read several of the submissions that have been provided to the committee, and I think a very clear picture has already been painted in terms of the uncertainty of the labour market due to a number of factors. We've heard some of that again today, so I won't repeat those issues again here, but I think there is a very clear understanding that success in the labour market will be increasingly challenging for our young people.
Within this landscape, experiential learning, particularly work-integrated learning, is increasingly important to ensure that young people have the skills they need to transition into the workforce, particularly for graduates of our post-secondary education institutions.
Mitacs is a key player in the Government of Canada's innovation and skills agenda. We have a significant investment from the Government of Canada over five years to support our growth to that target of 10,000 placements per year. We leverage this funding with provincial funding in every province across the country, and we leverage that again with investment from the private sector companies for every internship that they host. All of our internships are paid.
I'm happy to follow up with the committee to provide additional details on Mitacs' programming if that is of interest and would be helpful, but I'll move quickly now to the three simple recommendations that I'd like to put forward to the committee today for consideration.
The first one is that Canada's support to experiential learning be inclusive to all levels of post-secondary education. Much of the discussion around work-integrated learning focuses on the undergraduate level, but let's ensure that we continue to incorporate opportunities for graduate students and post-docs. These are highly trained, highly qualified, highly educated individuals who will be leaders in innovation and in our economy. Providing work-integrated learning experiences to students at this level gives them the chance to test out their skills in real-world situations, explore new career opportunities, and transition into meaningful employment outside of academia.
The second recommendation would be that research internships are recognized as valuable work-integrated learning experiences, both for students and for the industry partners. As such, these are really a strategic tool for Canada.
There are many forms of work-integrated learning, but the research-focused opportunities bring benefit not only to the students but also to the companies that are accessing talent at a time in the lives of those young people when they are making strategic career decisions. The companies are increasing investments in industrial research and development, and they're advancing their own innovation and talent goals. It also helps to improve the absorbative capacity of industry to take on graduate-level students and post-docs.
The third recommendation is around expanding international experiences within experiential learning. International experiences are critical for young Canadians to build global competencies that they will increasingly need in this globalized labour market.
Once again I thank the committee for undertaking this study and doing this deep dive on the crucial role that experiential learning plays in developing work-ready skills in our young post-secondary graduates. These experiences must be inclusive to all levels, leverage the knowledge in research capabilities of our young graduates, and be global in scope. Investments in our young people today are investments in the economic prosperity of our country.
Thank you very much.