Bonjour. I'm Dr. Jonathan Rittenhouse, vice-principal of Bishop's University.
As a general preamble to what I'm going to say, I would say that Bishop's has felt no direct impact from the operations of the 2003 action plan. We've felt none whatsoever. Therefore, our brief could be brief.
But I am here to talk about the past and future activities of our university and the vitality of the minority language community in Quebec. As you know, Bishop University was founded prior to Canadian Confederation and it is still, today, the main anglophone institution outside of Montreal. It is a major component of the minority community vitality in Quebec. As you also know, we are a small university but we continue to attract students from around the world.
Ten percent of our students come from over 50 countries, 45% of them from all provinces and territories of Canada, and more than 20% are francophones from Quebec. They come for our well-respected reputation as a student-focused institution, and those from away come because we are a safe and human-scaled portal into Canada and into Quebec. They come to us from Quebec because we are a safe and human-scaled portal to the rest of Canada and the world.
In our undergraduate program—and we have won awards for this category—we give our students enriching, intense and non-artificial opportunities to make contacts with a broad range of individuals and cultures.
Our Eastern Townships Research Centre has for nearly 25 years promoted the study of the region, with particular emphasis on the minority community. But as our most recent conference, held this past weekend, most clearly demonstrates--it was a conference devoted to the changing faces of our cultural communities in the region--our sense of that community in the region is open and wide.
Further, the Eastern Townships Research Centre at the university is the official repository of the archival heritage of the anglophone community, and we have collected, preserved, and made available the personal and institutional records of our region, for example, the Townshippers' Association.
For more than two generations, our education science school has played an important role in the training of teachers who have worked, and who continue to work, in all of Quebec's school boards, particularly in the rural regions.
Our Dobson-Lagassé Entrepreneurship Centre, founded five years ago, has acquired a reputation as being an innovative centre that provides courses, advice and counselling to new entrepreneurs through a wide network of notaries. Hence, all of our cultural resources—our big theatre, our studio theatre, our art gallery, our concert hall, our library and our sports field—provide our community with resources and activities that are unmatched outside of Montreal. But we can and we must do more and do it better, perhaps with the assistance of the progressive 2003 plan for the future of the Champlain Lake area.
We are currently in the process of doing some comprehensive strategic planning for the institution. As our Director, Mr. Robert Poupart, said, the purpose of this planning is to provide for our vitality in the XXIst century. We are presuming that he will say that our future vitality is important today, not only for the vitality of the minority community outside of Montreal, but for the majority community.
Most specifically--again, I say with a fully implemented 2003 action plan--we are ready to play an even more integral role in local development. We wish to expand our activities to better encompass the sense of lifelong learning and to meet the provincial government's recent request for educational institutions to better serve their communities. The phrase is envers la demande, as the government's report puts it.
We believe we can expand our service to the professional needs of the majority community, particularly through our long experience in second-language training, a training we always combine with a cultural element. Such service can and has attracted international students to our campus and so makes Quebec known to a wider community.
Further, we can work more closely with local anglophone organizations and local employers to tailor what we can offer to their pressing social and commercial needs. You've just heard in great detail those needs enunciated.
We sincerely believe that the federal government, through its action plan and other initiatives, can play a positive role in helping this institution achieve those goals.
Finally, we have already spoken to some federal representatives about our great plans to establish the equivalent of the Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal. We are hoping to expand and revitalize our library and to make it a great intellectual, cultural and social resource, one that will be able to meet the needs of users, assure the ongoing vitality of our university and minority and cultural communities outside of Montreal and also be open to Quebecers living in the region; a resource that will enable the university to continue attracting people to our small institution.
As our slogan says: "A Small University, a Great Institution".