Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before you today.
I'm going to provide you with some background on the Université de Moncton. The Université de Moncton is the biggest French-language university outside Quebec. It is based in Moncton and has campuses in Edmundston and Shippagan, New Brunswick. We have slightly more than 5,300 full-time students, 35% of whom are international students.
Our institution is the only francophone university in New Brunswick; it has a general education mission and offers university training in many, highly varied fields such as drama, nursing science, engineering, French-language common law and others. It has 135 undergraduate programs, 46 master’s programs and 8 doctoral programs. It also offers French second language training, summer immersion camps for high school students and many training programs in English and French.
As it is the only francophone university in New Brunswick, its mission is to provide access to a post-secondary education in French for the Acadian population in the Canadian and international francophonie. Access to French-language post-secondary training is thus a very important factor in guaranteeing the survival of French in minority communities.
The general education mission of the Université de Moncton entails significant financial challenges. We have many programs but low registration. Annual funding received from the Department of Canadian Heritage through the official languages in education program is approximately $4.9 million. That amount hasn't changed since 2002. While it made up approximately 5.5% of the university's revenues in 2002, it now represents 2.5%. With salaries and costs rising since 2002, we are facing increasing costs. We will have to cut either our services or our scholarships.
Stable and predictable funding is very important for the university. However, it's extremely important that the funding we receive be indexed so we can maintain the same level of service as we provided in 2002. Based on annual indexing since 2002, the $4.9 million we still receive should be $7.9 million in 2024; that's a shortfall of $3 million.
We also receive annual grants from the Consortium national de formation en santé. That funding, which has been stable since 2009, will be increased starting next year.
In 2022, we also received a significant grant of $18.5 million over 3 years for modernization purposes. That major grant enabled the university to make some investments that we had previously been unable to make for lack of funding. We also receive special grant funding for additional projects such as updating our community rooms, developing specialized programs and modernizing our classrooms.
Our priority is to offer French-language training to the entire public. Most of our graduates are able to work in both of Canada's official languages. We have the highest graduate retention rate, for both Canadian and international students, among all New Brunswick universities. Access to French-language post-secondary training vastly increases students' opportunities to work in French and the chances that our language will survive. We also cooperate with other institutions, such as the Université Sainte-Anne, with which we share faculty development training courses.
Federal investments help us maintain competitive tuition fees and offer high-quality training. However that funding should be indexed. Special programs are absolutely welcome, but stable basic funding would enable us to improve long-term financial planning.
Our infrastructure is another major challenge. Deferred maintenance at the Université de Moncton represents $136.5 million over the next 10 years; that's nearly equal to our annual budget. Most of the university's buildings were constructed in the 1960s and 1970s and are now in need of major renovations. We have to improve our buildings' energy efficiency and climate resilience, but that requires planning and significant investment.
To sum up, it is very important for us to have stable funding, which must be indexed because it hasn't been since 2002. I would also mention that infrastructure needs are becoming increasingly acute for the Université de Moncton.
Thank you.