Our organization was established 52 years ago to serve communities across Canada, in accordance with labour market needs. Our organization is therefore very young.
When our organization was created, it was taken for granted that students placement would be within a six month period. It was also important to make sure that employers were involved in developing the program of studies and that students would be able to have internships.
For our organization, internships are definitely a requirement. In fact, the vast majority—98%—of our 10,000 programs make an internship mandatory for graduation.
Those are the major features of colleges.
Also, when we conduct research, we do so with due regard to the problems being faced by industry or non-government organizations. We help them find solutions to their problems. Moreover, the industries we collaborate with retain intellectual property on their work. That's what makes us so different from other institutions.
I'll stop there, given the short time remaining to me, but I could provide you with other examples.