We do feel that we are discriminated against. In this case, actually, Michael was right. It was systemic in that way, because at the beginning, when we started our program, we were told that our students were not eligible for student financial assistance. You know, it took us over 20 years to communicate with the government and to really work very hard with our students, our associations and so on to request even the eligibility for anyone studying TCM and acupuncture in private institutions to get student assistance. That is one thing.
Another thing is that we do not have any government funding—I mean zero—and we all have to work by ourselves day and night. Sometimes people say that we are for-profit, but we are really not-for-profit: We do this because of our formal belief in this ancient medicine. We believe this medicine could help everybody significantly—including everyone in Canada here—with health promotion and for disease prevention and treatments.
Third, our graduates from private institutions were not allowed to get a working permit for international students. That cut out a lot of other things. Even for the past couple of years, we were not allowed to have any international students.
In this way, we do agree.