Thank you Mr. Petit for this question.
If there is one thing the CNFS is very proud of it is its achievements. We were committed to training a certain number of students, and, as you could see in my presentation, we greatly surpassed this objective.
What I would like is perhaps to do another presentation for the government to say that if subsidies are linked to financial responsibility, then it owes us money. We have trained more students, in fact 30% to 40% more, then we set out to do. There is a responsibility—and I totally agree with this concept within universities—to ensure that the money received from the federal government, which comes from taxpayers, is well spent and that we can present concrete projects in return for the money we are given.
That is why we proceeded with this evaluation exercise midway through Phase II of the health research and training project. I must say that out of a number of our projects that received provincial or federal funding, this is perhaps the only one that does not get questioned about its success and accomplishments.
The member institutions of the consortium reached individual contribution agreements and that is important. Each institution reached a contribution agreement with the Department of Health. The University of Ottawa committed to training a certain number of health professionals, doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists to serve linguistic minority regions. This commitment is included in a contract signed with Health Canada.
The Université de Moncton, the Collège Saint-Jean, the Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface, the Cité collégiale, Boreal College and Laurentian University all did the same thing: they all signed contribution agreements. Each of these institutions signed a contribution agreement with Health Canada, which includes a direct responsibility. Each institution has a responsibility to Health Canada. If this works well, Health Canada will cut us a cheque; if it does not work well, Health Canada will sound the alarm and tell us that something is not working or that it does not entirely understand what we are doing.
I can tell you that this approach works quite well. As they say, I'm all for accountability. I totally agree with this concept of responsibility found much more in the private sector, but with which universities also agree and can very well adapt to.