We received a call before this whole situation occurred, to warn us that more conditions would need to be met before the board is recognized and that more time would be needed to think about the project. This wasn't surprising, since the government had just taken office. In July, I received the call, but I didn't really have any quality time to explain the project. It's somewhat deplorable. If we had had some time, we may have been able to convey the full significance of the issue.
This isn't about adding another campus to an existing university, as is the case at Ryerson University, a wonderful institution that I love and that I consider a “mentor university” for the Université de l'Ontario français. Ryerson University and two or three other English-language universities have a new campus a few hundred kilometres from their base. However, in our case, we aren't talking about a satellite campus 100 or 200 kilometres from the main campus. We're talking about a brand new university.
We can't expect young people and people from central-southwestern Ontario to study in French 500 kilometres from home, in Sudbury, a place that I love and where I worked, or in Ottawa, even though I worked at the University of Ottawa. Without a francophone university in Toronto, most of these people will attend an English-language university, where they will stay and become assimilated.