Industry Committee on Aug. 14th, 2020

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes. It's a missed opportunity, in many respects.

Mr. Landon, I'd like to get you in on the conversation for an important issue, I think. You mentioned that there are quarantine capabilities available by universities for foreign students coming in. I think it's important for you to articulate the plan in place in case people get sick. Here in Windsor, the government allowed migrant workers to come in, with a plan that was altered, allowing a three-year-old business plan to be submitted. They didn't do on-site inspection. It shut us down to stage two for a long period of time and it caused the death of three workers. Many more are actually in hotels right now, held up because they got sick in Canada, not coming into Canada. They were healthy when they got here. Now they're sick.

What can you say about that situation? That's a really significant problem. It's not just the humanitarian aspect with regard to the deaths of individuals; there are also consequences for the entire economy, as we were left out of moving through the different stages.

[Philip Landon]

I think it's an absolutely tragic event. I guess it is a lesson learned for the universities, but also for the local health authorities, the provincial health authorities and the feds, on how to make sure that the quarantine works but also that the protocols are in place. That's what's happening right now in consultations between the local health authorities and the institutions, to ensure that what happened with temporary foreign workers doesn't happen with students. We have the right people at the local health authorities working with the right people at the universities.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Do you have everything, from translation to education services for the different cultures coming in? Do they have personal insurance for health care? Also, are there communications with the services in case they do get sick, so they aren't overwhelmed?

[Philip Landon]

Yes. Very briefly, I can't speak on behalf of all the universities and what plans they have in place, but those are the plans that they are putting in place now to ensure that this type of event doesn't happen with international students.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

We now move into round two of questions. Our first round of questions goes to MP Dreeshen.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

It's indeed an honour to have the witnesses here today and to talk about some of the issues that are so important to such a large sector of our society.

Of course, the type of education that you're going to be offering in the fall and into next year is going to be quite different, thanks to COVID-19, and students are going to be asked to take courses online, which many regard as a substandard learning experience, especially when it comes to labs and hands-on courses. I know I've spoken to many students who were excited about going to university this year, and they were so disappointed that this method of learning is going to be their new reality—so much so that some of them are considering waiting for a year in order to be out of the system until things get sorted out.

As perhaps you might have heard as the different MPs tried to get on to this virtual meeting today, we have concerns with broadband access and so on. Those Canadians who are living in rural Canada don't have adequate broadband access to the Internet, so we're almost looking at a two-tier education system, whereby some students will have full access to courses and all the things that entails, while others are left out of the higher education system almost completely.

My question is whether universities have put in place plans to address this particular issue. How will you be able to provide universal access to higher education if students have enrolled in your courses and they find out that it just can't work for them? Will you have the flexibility to be able to offer them a refund or to allow them to come back at a later time?

Perhaps I could go to Universities Canada first.

[Philip Landon]

Thanks very much for that question.

It may be helpful for the other members to respond specifically with what's going on. Certainly, when we put 1.4 million students online in a period of three weeks in March—as Dr. McCauley referred to it, the innovation of 10 years within a year—it was to finish up the last semester and to get students through. Our universities did that admirably. There is a lot of work to do to improve the level of digital and online learning, particularly, as you point out, the accessibility requirements so that everyone is getting the same opportunity for learning.

The universities across the country have been working all summer through a variety of ways. In most cases, they are spending extra money and extra time to develop more innovative ways, more accessible ways. This is the number one priority on campuses across Canada: How do we make sure that the distance learning and online learning opportunities are of a scale and a level that will maintain the great learning that happens at our universities?

It may be helpful if someone else—

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you very much. I will go to Dr. McCauley.

Could you address that? I was a high school math and physics teacher for 34 years. I was involved with distributive learning and different types of things. There are students who excel in that particular platform, and there are others who are completely lost. The other aspect of it is that it isn't so much.... A lot of it has to do with the technology and so on, but you have to train your instructors to figure out how to make this work effectively. I think that's one thing. We talk about making sure there's a machine out there for a student, but you have to make sure that your instructors are properly trained so that they can actually keep that motivation and keep the engagement.

What types of things have been done to assist in the distribution of learning from the instructor's point of view?

[Dr. Ed McCauley]

That is a really good question.

I mentioned that we pivoted very quickly during the winter term. That was done in a period of around four to five days. We allocated resources to faculty to help them pivot and get the courses online. We were also completely online during the spring/summer because of COVID-19. Our Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning actually provided resources to individual faculty members who wanted to further develop their courses. Actually, enrolment has increased in the spring/summer session because of that.

We're taking those learnings as much as possible and using them going forward for the fall term. However, as I mentioned, we want to be as open as possible in the fall term, just because of the hands-on practices you were talking about. We estimate that we'll have over 10,000 students on our campuses in small class settings, person-to-person interactions, and we've done a complete analysis with the public health system as to how we can actually accommodate that.

So we'll be looking very, very carefully at making sure the student quality and the quality of instruction are there for distributed learning, as well as in person.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

We now go to MP Longfield.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, again, to the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Dreeshen covered a few of my questions, but I want to go back to Mr. Landon, maybe with a little bit of a different ask on the question.

I met with the CSA group from the University of Guelph this past week and listened to their concerns as students returning in the fall. We had undergrad as well as grad students. There's much in common, but there are some real differences between undergrad and grad students, especially where grad students have family or they have to find housing and they have challenges around some of the costs in terms of having their family with them as they go through their education. They talked about tuition costs—there's no change in the cost of tuition, even though there's a change in the delivery of material—and challenges with communicating with supervisors and professors. Looking at rural students, as Mr. Dreeshen mentioned, there is poor connectivity, socio-economic status—not everybody can afford the electronics to study—and limited access to mandatory and paid-for student resources. They don't have access to the library, but they're still paying for library resources.

Has Universities Canada been working with student groups? Do you have a working group that's looking at the impacts from a student's point of view, how COVID has impacted their lives and how universities are working to provide them with opportunities going forward?

[Philip Landon]

Thanks for the question.

We don't have a working group, but we stay in close contact with student associations and their national representatives on this and on a number of other issues. In many ways, the short answer is that we have close to a hundred institutions that are doing their best at the moment. Sometimes it may not be what the students are looking for, but they're working towards that. The universities listen to their students as well.

I think the crux of the matter is that the cost to the university remains the same. In fact, the cost to the university has increased: the building maintenance costs, the staffing costs, and now the added cost of new design. It has increased. What universities across the country are doing is working to get the best possible online experience, with the hope that we'll be able to start students coming back as soon as September and start to move into an on-campus environment as soon as possible, because that's actually what makes our universities so great.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Thank you.

My next question is for Université du Québec à Montréal.

As was just mentioned by Mr. Landon, looking at the cost of running the university, we have support staff, cleaning staff, the professors themselves, the researchers, unionized in different sectors. Most of them are funded through the provincial funding models. How can the federal government support universities in terms of the wages and the cost of operation from the wages of the staff?

I'm directing it to Quebec, but if Mr. Landon or anybody else wants to chime in, that would be helpful as well.

[Magda Fusaro]

Thank you for asking.

Essentially, a number of avenues exist, beginning with operating costs. It's true that they are spread across a wide range of employee categories. Operating costs associated with non-teaching staff are funded structurally through student enrolment and tuition. Similarly, the same funding model covers the costs associated with teaching staff, so student enrolment, on one hand, and government funding, on the other.

Next is research. Many Université du Québec researchers, particularly those at my institution, are funded federally. You'd be quite surprised at how many researchers the federal government funds at the Université du Québec à Montréal, or UQAM. One promising option—and this ties in with what I mentioned in our short presentation—is supporting research through programs that are slightly different, for instance, those aimed at emerging researchers or post-doctoral international students.

You seem to be quite interested in international students, so I took a look at the figures while you were speaking. At UQAM, the number of international students in undergraduate and graduate programs is on the rise. In fall 2020, we'll be welcoming more international students than we did the year before. The increases are small, of course. I don't mean 400 new students all in one shot, but at the undergraduate level, nearly 500 new international students will be arriving on campus.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Thank you. That helps to get the complexity into our report. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

We will now go to MP Gray.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll start my questions with Mr. Landon from Universities Canada.

Since COVID-19 is taking most students out of their physical classrooms, have you heard, with all the universities that you represent, if they're looking at increasing their class sizes due to the fact that they might have been restricted previously because of classroom physical limitations?

[Philip Landon]

That's a very good question.

I would say that I actually haven't heard that, but that's very interesting. Perhaps some of my colleagues have, but I have not heard that at all.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

I'll go on with a couple of other questions.

Of course, this might be different for each university, but as an average going across the country, what is the average percentage of tuition that comes from international students?

[Philip Landon]

I don't have the number right in front of me. It does vary, but it is upwards of 20%.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Landon, with a lot of international students potentially not entering Canada this year, as you mentioned in your earlier remarks, are you seeing universities substituting for this with domestic enrolment instead, since they might be losing some of that international enrolment? Are you hearing that universities would be substituting those spaces with domestic students instead?

[Philip Landon]

It has never really been a trade-off like that.

What we have heard is that enrolment numbers for domestic students are looking similar to those in previous years, so that's very good news. However, it has not been a situation of universities denying domestic students in order to take international students. In fact, they've been growing to be able to take both.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

If potentially there may not be as many international students this fall, have you heard whether any universities might be amending their admission requirements to allow for more domestic students, to bring up their capacity, which would also increase some of their revenue?