A bilingual institution that lives and operates in both official languages, that offers quality education in French and English, that concerns itself with putting French and English on an equal footing and promotes the Francophonie and bilingualism inevitably faces higher operating costs than a unilingual post-secondary institution. That is the reason why, in February of 2005, the University of Ottawa undertook a comprehensive study of the cost of bilingualism. That analysis showed us that the bilingualism support grant which we receive from the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities—an amount that is provided partly under the Bilateral Education Agreement with the federal government—covers less than 60 per cent of what is needed to provide the current level of service in both languages.
Annual financial requirements total $30 million, whereas the government subsidy, which remains unchanged in 10 years, is $17.4 million. As a result, the University of Ottawa requires additional funding of $13.7 million per year—an amount it has requested, in fact—in order to maintain the quality of its existing programs, and would need a further $13 million to provide access to more programs that are not currently offered in French.
I would just like to conclude by saying that my colleague and I have the honour of representing a great bilingual post-secondary institution where Canada's two official languages are on an equal footing; an institution that has a much larger Francophone student population than any other institution outside Quebec; an institution that has implemented a system of French immersion which is unique in Canada and elsewhere in the world; an institution which, using its own resources, recently established an Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute which truly ensures that its expertise in language teaching, research, bilingualism and policy development will be recognized nationally and internationally.
We believe that our specific mission to promote bilingualism and foster the development of French culture in Ontario and Canada, as well as the diversity of our curricula, enable us to make an important contribution and play a leadership role in promoting Canada's linguistic duality. We also believe that we are very well equipped, as a Canadian university, to provide a new generation of competent, bilingual civil servants to the federal public service.
Thank you for your kind attention and we are now available to take your questions.