Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My colleague, our vice-president, comes from New Brunswick, so I know what you mean.
My name is Daniel Giroux, and I am the president of Collège Boréal.
Two of the 24 colleges in Ontario are francophone, including Collège Boréal. Our college was established in a large region comprising 37 sites and 27 communities. It offers more than 70 post-secondary or regular study programs as well as vocational training programs.
Since some 23,500 students and clients pass through our institution every year, the continuum and the connections we maintain with our boards are very important to us.
Collège Boréal received some very good news this year: We are the only Ontario college that has recorded rising numbers of Canadian students over the past three years. More specifically, the number of first-year students at our institution increased by 15.1%. That's excellent news for us.
Ontario's 24 colleges, like their students, receive annual report cards, which are posted to their websites. The purpose of this practice, which has been ongoing for 24 years, is to gauge the satisfaction of students, graduates and the employers who hire our graduates. Collège Boréal has received top marks among all Ontario colleges in 21 of those 24 years. We are extremely proud of that fact.
Furthermore, Collège Boréal is the only Ontario college that guarantees graduates a job. This is an initiative that we call the “Boréal guarantee”. If students graduate from Collège Boréal and can't find a job in their field within a year of graduating, we refund all tuition fees. That will give you an idea of how confident we are in the quality of our training.
Today I would like to address three issues.
The first is enhancing of the official languages in education [Technical difficulty—Editor].