I was just building on the previous question, before Mr. Godin, that France is absolutely a competitive nation for us in terms of attracting francophone students. It has a very powerful brand and historic roots. It is very aggressive in attracting francophone students to France.
It's important for all of Canada's universities as well, in Quebec and beyond Quebec, to attract French-speaking students. In minority francophone communities across the country, French-speaking students are a very valuable asset not only to the educational enterprise, but also to the economic growth of the region.
With regard to the broader competition in anglophone markets, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia are our biggest competition and they spend vastly larger sums on marketing their brands.
We are in regular dialogue with IRCC on a number of issues. One is how we build a stronger Canadian brand, because people think of nation first when they're thinking of where they want to study.
Second, we have a very positive, non-partisan, all-partisan policy environment that welcomes international students. We have good policies. We need to improve our operational realities on the ground in the markets we're trying to attract students from. Therefore, we are working with IRCC in key markets in terms of how we improve their staff's knowledge of the work that's being done and how we ensure that we have high-quality, high-integrity and quick visa processing. It's really important.
I mentioned some of the refusal rates that our prospective students have encountered. Universities go to a great deal of effort and expense to raise their profile and recruit these students, and if they're refused for head-scratching reasons, we've lost investment. We've lost the potential of that student.
We want to make sure that we have world-class student attraction.