Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before the committee today.
With me is Wendy Therrien, who leads our public policy and public affairs work.
On behalf of Universities Canada and our members, thank you for the invitation to speak with you today, and thank you for the extraordinary work that all parliamentarians continue to do during this challenging time.
I had the pleasure of appearing before this group just last November to discuss international students. As you may recall, Universities Canada represents all 96 universities across the country. Taken together, Canada’s universities are a $38-billion enterprise. Universities employ 310,000 people and are often the largest employer in their community. They are social and economic anchors during these tumultuous times.
Canada’s universities are an integral part of the team Canada approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, from mitigating risk to finding a vaccine and accelerating Canada’s economic and social recovery.
Universities appreciate the challenge now facing Canadians: balancing the optimism of the vaccine and restarting the Canadian economy while continuing the health measures necessary to keep COVID-19 at bay.
It's the role of attracting talent to drive economic recovery that I want to discuss with you today. Today’s global competition for talent is the 21st century gold rush. In a world economy increasingly powered by ideas, Canada is in an enviable position, but it's a position that will be challenged. We are a country of open communities. We have an accessible, world-class, bilingual post-secondary education system. We have taken steps like the temporary foreign worker program to make coming to Canada attractive to highly skilled individuals.
You might have heard the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, highlight in a speech recently that a well-educated and diverse workforce will be our greatest asset in driving Canada’s prosperity.
Since we last spoke in November, there have been two significant developments in ongoing global competition for high-skilled talent. First, President Biden is putting forward a strategy to modernize the U.S. immigration system. It includes boosting funding to improve visa processing and making it easier for STEM graduates to work in the United States. It also streamlines visa applications for highly skilled workers and their families.
Second, the United Kingdom formally exited the European Union, and the U.K. government then launched an aggressive campaign to attract the world’s brightest minds to study and do research at British universities. The campaign includes new multi-year work permits for international students to work in the U.K. after graduation.
It's clear that the global competition for talent remains fierce. While our international brand remains strong, Canada will have to work even harder to secure the world’s brightest minds.
Since the onset of the pandemic, Canada’s universities have been working closely with both the federal government and provincial counterparts on a central pillar of talent attraction: the safe return of over 200,000 international students studying at universities each year.Those students contribute over $22 billion to the Canadian economy and support 218,000 jobs. Even more important for the purposes of this committee is the fundamental role international students play in building Canada’s highly skilled talent pipeline.
While many international students have spent the last year learning online, they are all ultimately seeking a Canadian experience. In the coming weeks, the next cohort of international students will be deciding whether to accept admissions offers from universities in Canada or from other competitor countries. Visa processing times and travel restrictions will be important factors in their decision-making. It's critical that Canada conveys our openness to their eventual, safe arrival.
The question of talent attraction extends beyond international students. Government measures such as the temporary foreign worker program and the international mobility program are essential to talent attraction. Universities use these programs to attract the best and brightest faculty and researchers to Canada, improving the learning experiences for Canadian students while also strengthening Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
For example, these programs helped Dalhousie University recruit two scientists as research chairs to work with Dr. Jeff Dahn, the industrial research chair for Tesla at Dalhousie. For the past five years, Dr. Dahn’s group has been filing patents on battery technology for Tesla that could lead to a new battery cell enabling a million miles in a battery pack. It's projects such as this one that demonstrate why the temporary foreign worker program is so critical and why strategic investments to boost Canada’s visa processing capacity is a cost-effective solution to build on the success of these programs and ensure that Canada is best positioned to drive the economic recovery from COVID-19.
We appreciate the work by all members of this committee to help Canada recover from COVID-19. We look forward to partnering to build a stronger Canada.