Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee.
My name is François Dornier, and, for more than four years, I have been chairman of the Réseau des cégeps et des collèges francophones du Canada, which is known by the acronym RCCFC. I am here today with our executive director, Jean Léger. It's a pleasure to be with you today to outline our organization's perspective to your committee.
The mission of the RCCFC, which was created in 1995, is to establish a true partnership among francophone college-level educational institutions in Canada. The RCCFC is a network of support, promotion and exchange in the development of college-level French-language instruction in Canada, a network that strives to improve and provide access to college-level studies in French.
The RCCFC's mission is also to support development of the Canadian francophonie through the expertise of its member institutions.
Our membership comprises all francophone minority colleges and virtually all Quebec CEGEPs.
We would like to congratulate the committee on its decision to examine the major challenges that francophone post-secondary educational institutions face in recruiting foreign students.
We have surveyed our members in recent weeks to determine their opinions on foreign student recruitment, and many of them are concerned about the present situation and want to see prompt, significant changes to the decision-making criteria and processes for issuing study permits.
We are proud to be cooperating on today's topic with our colleagues from the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne, or ACUFC, the Fédération des cégeps du Québec and the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne, the FCFA. That is why we support the positions they presented earlier in your proceedings.
We will not attempt to restate their concerns, with which you are now well acquainted.
As for our perspective, all the leaders we have surveyed feel it is essential that they diversify their revenue sources. Consequently, many institutions are creating greater financial flexibility by admitting foreign students. In some instances, the survival of institutions in certain regions is even at stake. However, reliance on the foreign student market can put the return on their international recruitment investment at serious risk. Some institutions also provide services such as immigrant reception and employment integration, which are becoming gateways to college training and francophone immigration in many communities, hence the importance of this issue. This is why many college administrators would like to see greater cooperation among colleges, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and embassies to facilitate the issuing of dual-intent student visas, shorten processing time and thus avoid situations in which students arrive after the academic year has begun.
In short, our members are more concerned about processing delays, high refusal rates and real and apparent prejudice in processing student permit applications, particularly those from francophone Africa and the French West Indies, as well as the lack of consistency in decisions made by IRCC officers as they pertain to the dual intent to study and apply for permanent residence.
Consequently, our recommendations are as follows.
We recommend that close and more frequent contact be established between institutions and officers to assist in rectifying the present situation. We also recommend that officer numbers be increased and that officers be better trained in the circumstances of the regions and institutions. Furthermore, refusal letters should provide more details, not a merely few brief facts as is currently the case. It is important to facilitate access to agents for the purpose of obtaining more information on the reasons for refusal, greater cooperation with the institutions and better information sharing. In our view, agents should not make arbitrary decisions without allowing the institution to discuss them at greater length. We recommend establishing a system of intent and direct communication with study permit applicants similar to the system the Quebec government has put in place for the Certificat d'acceptation du Québec, the CAQ.